breakfast Archives - Naked Plate

Baked Eggs with Rucola,Yoghurt and Chili-Sage butter – Turkish Breakfast

January 29, 2012 by Minna 5 Comments

A perfect start for the day, lovely oven baked eggs on a rucola bed with thick yoghurt and sprinkled with chili-sage butter. Is there anything better loaded with proteins than this Turkish breakfast? Naah….

When I first saw this recipe in one of the Finnish women magazines, it was love at first sight. The full page photo of delish looking eggs and yoghurt can’t go wrong. Clip Clip.. it went to my recipe folder.
In Finland I would make it only at summer when we have fresh rucola available, all imported veggies are rather expensive. Here in Dubai you can crow rucola (Gharghir جرجير) year around, even in balcony, well if you are green finger. In case you are not, supermarkets and fresh food markets offer it year around and it is not expensive, 10 dirhams per box (2 EUR). Here’s a photo of my rucola garden, as you see, not ready yet to harvest, so I took mine from market around the corner.

My Little Herb Garden

Here’s how to make it:

Turkish Baked Eggs with Rucola, Yoghurt and Chili-Sage Butter
300 g rucola
2 teaspoon olive oil
4 eggs
150 g Turkish yoghurt or Labneh
1 garlic clove
50 g butter (salted)
½ teaspoon chili flakes
6 sage leaves
Salt

1. Heat the oven to 150°C

2. Rinse rucola leaves and heat the oil in frying pan add rucola and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated.

3. Spread the slightly cooked rucola on oven proof dish. Make 4 hollows in the rucola and crack in each an egg.

4. Bake in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes until the egg whites set.

5. While eggs are in oven combine the yoghurt with the garlic and salt to taste and leave at room temperature.

6. Melt the butter in a small pan and add the chili flakes, cook until the butter foams and color changes to golden brown, add finely chopped sage, and move out from stove.

7. Take the eggs out from oven and spoon over dollops of yoghurt and chili-sage butter. Serve straight when hot with the bread.

There’s no cooking if I did not twisted the recipe somehow. I did not have thick Turkish yoghurt; instead I used normal low fat yoghurt which I filtered with cheese cloth on metallic colander. Works well also thru paper kitchen towels or paper coffee filter. It takes some time, but consistency is very nice.

To get mild garlic flavor smash the clove, let soak in yoghurt and just before serving collect the smashed clove off. Gives hint of garlic taste without ruining the day of your colleagues or neighbors in the lift when you breathe your Good Morning wishes. I did not use garlic at all and taste did not suffer.

Try to bake eggs in individual oven dishes, ramekins, no fuss on serving.

It hit only when I wrote this blog post that I should have used my favorite Turkish Labneh from Pinar. Why didn’t I get it earlier, no worries, now I have to make it for next Friday brunch again.

Submitted to Breakfasts of the World Challange by Very Good Recipes.
Sahtain! Afiyet olsun!

Breakfasts of the World Challenge
on Very Good Recipes

Flatbread from Savonia – Savolainen Pannurieska for Breakfast

January 28, 2012 by Minna 8 Comments

What in the earth is harrish?! I found 2 kilos of grains in my kitchen cupboard and was wondering why have I bought it and what could I do with it. It turned out that it is harees(هريس) and not harrish as written in English on bag. I asked around, googled and find out it is whole wheat grains, which is locally used here in Dubai for a stew or porridge with meat. That dish is called Harees or Harisah, a specialty of Ramadan.

Well…. back to the Finnish flatbread. We Finns love all kind of breads and porridges, anything from grains which are cultivated in homeland, like oats, barley, wheat and rye. The bread is at its best when fresh and straight from oven, only butter spread on it. That’s the way authentic Finnish bread is eaten and served

I have got this Finnish Savonian flatbread recipe from my mother, her family is from Upper Savonia in Finland. The original recipe calls for whole or cracked barley, I have cheated and replaced barley with harees and it worked well.

The Original Savonian Flatbread – Savolainen Pannurieska recipe

1 liter buttermilk or curdled milk (=add 100 ml of buttermilk to lukewarm milk and let stand 2 hrs in room temperature)

1 cup whole barley grains (boil about 10 minutes)

2 cups rolled oats

1-2 eggs

1 tsp salt

1. Mix curdled milk or buttermilk and barley and let stand in fridge overnight

2. Add rolled oats on the morning and let stand another 3 hours in fridge

3. Add eggs and salt just before baking

4. Cover baking pan with baking paper and smelt 25-50 g of butter on it, pour the bread dough on smelted butter and bake at 225-250°C about 30 minutes

The recipe is really easy and makes wholesome flatbread, no worries about rising dough. I twisted the recipe totally because I did not have buttermilk or laban as it’s called in Dubai, and replaced barley with whole wheat called harees.

I used low fat milk and cream to make full fat milk. Instead of laban I used yoghurt to curdle the milk. My mother uses also cracked barley and buttermilk and mixes 50 ml oil with eggs and oats next day, no need to put butter on baking sheet if oil is used in dough.

Give it a try to this healthy flatbread, called pannurieska in Finnish. Something you have to taste yourself, soft and sourish but creamy, just knife some salted butter on it and you are well fed.

Pour a class of cold fresh milk and enjoy with hot buttered Savonian Pannurieska. That’s what I call a traditional Finnish breakfast. Submitted to Breakfasts of the World Challenge by Very Good Recipes.

Breakfasts of the World Challengeon Very Good Recipes

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Cottage Cheese pancake – Russian Syrniki

November 8, 2011 by Minna 7 Comments

In Finland Thursday is “pancake and pea soup” -day. While my friend remind me last week about pancake day, I got inspiration to try something called syrniki, from my neighbor country Russia, after Salme said that Russian pancakes beat the normal ones. The recipe asks for quark, but I have not found it in supermarkets here in Dubai. Instead I am using cottage cheese, the creamier the better.

In Russian cuisine syrnikis (сы́рник[и]) are fried quark cheese pancakes eaten with sour cream, jam, honey, or apple sauce. They are also known as tvorozhniki (творо́жники) in Russia. It is a traditional Russian dessert or breakfast food and there are so many variations of it. I like this simple recipe for my perfect protein filled breakfast, it is healthy too. Use low fat cottage cheese and garnish with fresh berries.

Russian Syrniki recipe

Ingredients

1 cup cottage cheese
2 eggs, beaten
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons semolina flour (optional)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
1/3 cup canola oil for frying

Directions

1. Mix together the cottage cheese, beaten eggs and sugar. Stir in semolina and all-purpose flour, and work into soft dough. If you do not have semolina, use 2 tbs of flour instead.

2. Heat the oil over medium heat until hot. Spoon pancake dough on to the pan and fry the syrniki in hot oil until golden brown on each side, 3 to 4 minutes per side.

Serve with dollop of cream, sour cream or crème fraiche and fruit jam or preserve or fresh fruits.

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I could not resist of having them with my mom’s homemade raspberry preserve and spoonful of organic crème fraiche. What more to ask, oh a nice cup of tea of course. Delish!

‘How to’ link