English muffins! (Yes, English muffins!!) @ home

I was amazed the first time I learnt that you can actually make English muffins, complete with split, right in your own home.  And if you’ve got a bit of semolina on-hand, yours can look just as good (if not, better) than the Tip Top ones.

I nabbed this recipe from Easy as (Vegan) Pie and adapted it ever-so-slightly.

7g packet dry yeast

1 Tbsp sugar

1 cup lukewarm water

2¼ cups flour

1 tsp salt

3 Tbsp olive oil or butter, softened

A handful of semolina

Combine yeast, sugar and water.  Leave to stand for 5 minutes to let the yeast develop (watch for the foam – this is good).  Combine flour and salt in a large bowl, make a well in the centre and pour in the yeasty-goodness and olive oil/butter.

Gradually incorporate all the flour into the liquid, eventually making a soft dough, then tip out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth (around 8 minutes).  Cut a cross in the top of the dough and place it in a clean, oiled bowl.  Cover and leave to prove until doubled in size (45 minutes to 1 hour).

Preheat oven to 180˚C.  Knock the air out of the dough and knead again for a minute or so.  Roll it out to a flat circle, about ½ inch thick.  Cut into rounds to the size you want, then pat both sides with semolina.  Heat a drizzle of olive oil or butter in a heavy-based frypan and fry the rounds on each side until golden.  Once browned, put onto a baking tray and bake in the oven for 6-10 minutes.

These will keep for a few days in the fridge and for many days in the freezer.  When ready to use, split down the middle, toast and serve with loads of butter, vegemite, jam, poached/scrambled eggs, etc.



Banana bread, sweet dukkah and yoghurt for brekkie @ home

The bananas we get in Oecusse are lovely and sweet, but you can only buy them by the massive bunch-load.  So, needless to say, we often have large numbers of them going soft at the same time.  If the childhood version of my friend Amanda lived here, there’d be no problem with this, because she used to be a big fan of liquid-ripe bananas.  But in lieu of a little Amanda, I make banana bread instead.  This recipe is adapted from a delicious. magazine version.

Banana Bread

1⅔ cups plain flour

1½ tsp baking powder

⅓ cup caster sugar

⅓ cup brown sugar

1 tsp grown cinnamon

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract (I used vanilla bean paste)

3 ripe bananas, mashed

Sift flour and baking power into a bowl.  Stir in sugars and cinnamon.  Add eggs, vanilla and banana and stir until well combined.  Pour into greased loaf pan and bake for about 45 minutes at 160˚C.

Too easy.

**

Home-made yoghurt

I’ve been making my own yoghurt for the last year or so.  It’s a very satisfying thing to do when the supermarket is an overnight ferry’s journey away from your fridge.  The method for yoghurt is very simple, provided you have a starter-culture:  either a packet culture (such as “Easiyo”) or just some store-bought yoghurt at room temperature will do.  You will also need a thermos.

600mL milk – we only have access to powdered milk, which works fine.

1 or 2 Tbsp milk powder – this will result in a thicker, but fattier, yoghurt.  (I don’t skimp on the fat.)

1 Tbsp plain yoghurt at room temperature

First, get your thermos up to temperature by filling it with hot water. 

Put the milk in a heavy-based saucepan.  Stir in the extra milk powder, making sure it all dissolves.  Slowly bring the heat up, giving the milk an occasional stir.  Bring to the point where bubbles begin to surface on the edges, but do not boil.  Turn off the heat and then let the milk cool to body temperature (this can be tested with the inside of the wrist, like a baby’s bottle).  When the heat is just right, stir in the yoghurt.* 

Tip the hot water out of the thermos and pour in the milk. Screw on the lid and then leave, without disturbing, for at least 7 hours and up to 24 hours.

When you open the thermos, the yoghurt should have set.  If it is too runny, you can strain off some of the whey through a muslin-lined sieve (I use a clean chux which works just as well).

I like spreading the yoghurt onto a piece of toasted banana bread – I think of it as a poor man’s ricotta, but slightly more zingy.  We also get awesome local honey here, which is equally yummy drizzled on the yoghurt, sprinkled with sweet dukkah (recipe follows) or a handful of muesli.

* Note that if you do this too early (ie when the milk is still too hot), it will curdle.  If this happens, you can still continue the process, but at the end you’ll have cheese instead of yoghurt.  You’ll need to strain the whey from the curds, too.

**

Sweet Dukkah

Adapted from delicious. magazine.

You can get creative with this concoction, using any type of nuts or seeds you like; hazelnuts and pistachios are particularly good.  I also added some shredded coconut to mine, which made it a bit tropical.

⅓ cup sesame seeds

2 Tbsp poppyseeds

⅔ cup toasted almonds, chopped

¼ cup pine nuts

¼ cup desiccated/shredded coconut

3 tsp ground cinnamon

Drizzle of olive oil

1 Tbsp honey

Combine all ingredients except oil and honey and spread onto a lined baking tray.  Drizzle with oil and toast at 200˚C for about 4 minutes.  Add the honey and stir.  Toast for another 5-7 minutes, until golden (be careful of over-toasting: it can happen fast).  Cool completely.  Pulse in a food processor, or grind in a mortar and pestle until roughly chopped.

**

Now that’s a hearty breakfast.  : )

Omelette for brekkie @ Bar Luna, Ubud

“Chic and cheerful” is a phrase that comes to mind when I think about Bar Luna. It’s a place where the cool crowd hangs out, but it is still down to earth enough that you can feel at home, it’s not overly expensive and the food is excellent.  Wade and I were here for 2 meals in a row – dinner and brekkie the next day.

The dinner was a selection of mezze-style dishes – breads, olives, dips, grilled mushrooms, smoked marlin pâté as well as grilled fish and chips.  We may have over-ordered just a tad.  But it all tasted sensational, especially the mushrooms.

Brekkie started off on a high and then just got better.  The latte, although a bit strong for me, came with a little round of shortbread which I very much appreciate first thing in the morning.  It helped to offset the strength of the coffee, but it also helped to quiet my grumbling tummy until my brekkie arrived.

And I loved the tiny glass of iced water that came with it, too.

Wade had a strawberry lassie, bursting with fresh strawberry-ness...

... with scrambled eggs, mushrooms and tomato relish:



The only downside to this dish was the fact that the scrambled eggs were weeping, but they were otherwise excellent.  The mushies were spongy and full of flavour and the tomato relish had a good sweet/smoky balance. 

I had an omelette with tomatoes, spinach and fetta:



This brekkie made me smile and smile.  I loved the salty fetta with the eggs and the tomatoes didn’t make it too watery, which is often a consequence of tomatoes in omelettes.  The sourdough bread helped to tip the balance of what constitutes a reasonable amount of food to eat at any given time, but it was too good to pass up.  And the tomato relish was relishious!  In fact, the tomato relish at Bar Luna has inspired me to make my own at home – or at least have some sort of relish or chutney with my eggs on a regular basis.  It’s becoming my new thing.

Brekkie @ Lala and Lili’s Warung, Ubud

If it weren’t for the fact that I am fairly confident that this blog hasn’t reached epic readership proportions (yet), I would be reluctant to post this item, because Lala and Lili’s is one of those places you don’t want to get too popular, for fear it will be ruined. 

Located in the quiet village of Penestanan sitting amongst rice paddies (although these are quickly losing out to rapidly-growing villa developments in the area) Lala and Lili’s is a place to drink in the old school tranquillity of Ubud.    It’s another one of those unpretentious places with decent food, lovely staff and, in all honesty the BEST FREAKING FRUIT SALAD IN THE UNIVERSE!!!

Unblemished banana pieces, succulent papaya, luscious mango and juicy, sweet watermelon with a squeeze of lime and velvety yoghurt, this is my perfect fruit salad.  No crunchy pieces of apple destroying the equilibrium of the fruits’ texture and no annoying pieces of orange or mandarin curdling the yoghurt.  This is THE thing to eat at Lala and Lili’s (and in Ubud generally – for selected individuals only).  And get this:  sometimes they put AVOCADO in their fruit salad and IT IS DIVINE.  Its firm yet creamy texture defines avocado as the tropical fruit it should be.

The rest of my meal was superfluous, but still tasted pretty darn good.  It was a banana pancake made with wholemeal flour (good), but came with commercial honey (not-so-good; I would have preferred palm sugar syrup or maple syrup).

... and Wade had savoury scrambled eggs, which looked healthy and wholesome and tasted the same.



Drinks were iced coffee (me)

Cold, sweet, creamy...

... and a mango lassie (Wade)

Like a dream, but with mango in it.

Ripe for the picking.

Banana bread @ Tutmak

Creatures of habit are Wade and I (actually, more Wade – I like variety! Adventure! Eating at a different restaurant for every meal!), we not only ate breakfast at the same place we had eaten dinner the night before, we even sat at the same table.  Ho hum.  The dilemmas of life in Ubud. (I believe these are what you call #firstworldproblems.)

I’m glad we did though.  This brekkie was one of the best.

Not too sweet and lightly toasted, the banana bread was as good as any I’ve had before.  The fruit – a trio of watermelon, red papaya and pineapple - perfectly ripe and sweet and the yoghurt on top was thick, creamy and drizzled with honey.  This amount of food was just right for me for brekkie.  I didn’t even get breakfast-table envy about Wade’s order, which, I will admit, looks like something I would normally get breakfast-table envy about, had I not ordered something so awesome myself.



That’s Wade in the background, looking like he’s waiting patiently for me to photograph his breakfast before he touches it, but his face was actually looking very annoyed because he couldn’t wait to rip into those deliciously golden potato rostis!!

French toast @ Casa Luna

Back to the familiar territory of the quickly-expanding empire that is Casa Luna (+ Honeymoon Bakery + Honeymoon Guesthouse + Casa Luna Cooking School + Indus restaurant + Bar Luna + an emporium selling giftware, and, by the time I’ve finished writing this, they will have probably opened up a yoga studio or a bookshop too).  They are effective self-promoters.

It is an empire, but it is a locally-owned empire, which doesn’t make it so bad.  Janet de Neef is an Australian woman who went to Ubud, met a Balinese guy, got married, had kids and started opening up guesthouses and bakeries and restaurants etc.  She has written a book called Fragrant Rice, which is about her life, her initiation into the Balinese culture, as well as her love of Balinese food, and it includes recipes.  I own that book, and I have to say that it has helped to bring a little bit of Bali to Timor, as many of the ingredients for Balinese cooking are available in the market in Oecusse.  

The food at Casa Luna is of a distinctively high quality and the owners have a pretty good ethos around using local produce and cooking everything from scratch, which is perhaps why I like it so much.

For breakfast on this particular day I ordered a mixed juice and French toast with yoghurt and palm sugar syrup.  Wade had a strawberry lassie:

The bread is made fresh at the Honeymoon Bakery and the palm sugar syrup is a good example of using a local product instead of importing, say, maple syrup.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the yoghurt was homemade either.  I enjoyed this brekkie, but it was a bit too heavy on the bread.  As you can see, they are really thick slices (but at least it’s not that sugary white sliced crap for a change), and it was a bit light on the “French” aspect - the bread was merely shown the egg batter.  But it wasn’t too bad.

I also ordered a Flores latte, which is like a chai latte, made with tea from Flores:

Again, it’s a good example of using local products – Flores tea, cinnamon, cloves, etc.  There is something in this tea that is overpowering though – I think it’s the cloves.  Maybe they could ease up on the cloves.

But, do you know what I really like?

A little biscuit served with my cuppa.  It is a nice detail that goes a long way.

Set brekkie @ Ubud Aura

When you’re in Ubud, there are so many awesome places to eat, that you have to wonder if it’s really worth saving your money and eating at the hotel.  The standard breakfast at the Ubud Aura (our accommodation, appropriately named for its close proximity to other “new age hippy” hangouts such as the Yoga Barn (not that I’m knocking the Yoga Barn, because I LOVE the Yoga Barn)), is about on par with a good breakfast at a Dili hotel.  The omelette was passable, if not a little bland, despite it being tri-coloured.  The bread was sugary, white sliced CRAP (man, I’m OVER that shit).  The fruit was reminiscent of cold storage supermarket fruit – hard and flavourless.  Juice:  plain watermelon.  I might as well have just eaten an extra piece of watermelon from my fruit plate.

 But, you know, it’s fuel for the day, if that’s all you’re looking for.

I, however, am not.

Bacon and Eggs, Castaway Bar and Restaurant, Dili

This was actually a really tasty breakfast at Castaways. I have had many, so I’m a good judge.

One thing about this place: they really know how to cook crispy bacon, and today was no exception.

Often I’ve had disappointing eggs here (clear liquid weeping into the toast – not good). But today, the eggs were intact but not rubbery, and they were flecked with a little tinge of spring onion. Just delightful.

I could take or leave the cheesy grilled tomato; I don’t find it offensive, and when I eat it I can tick off a half-serving of veggies for the day (or is that fruit?). I really wish they would get some decent bread though. This white sliced sugary crap is so unsatisfying.

The coffee is another thing at Castaways that can be below par. There appears to be some consensus amongst coffee makers in shopping centre cafes globally and the Castaway Bar and Restaurant in Dili that it is really cool to layer a latte, so that the coffee sits on the bottom of the glass and the milk on the top. Although this does not affect the flavour, I can’t help but feel that it is an unnecessary appeal to the aesthetic. I don’t want to be reminded of shopping centre cafes. I have been noticing lately that Castaway’s coffee standards are improving though. Once I’d mixed this morning’s coffee all together, it had a good colour to it – not too weak or strong:

And, although I don’t take sugar, I really love the sweet little packets it comes in:

This was an all-round satisfying weekend brunch.

Sunshiney Breakfast

The breakfast at Casa Minha is the nicest “free” (ie included in the already-inflated room price) breakfast I’ve been able to find in Dili. It is a buffet-style brekkie with all the regular fare: fruit, cereal, toast, eggs, etc, but there are a few points that make Casa Minha’s really yummy:

1. The fruit is really good quality – really sweet pineapple, orange and papaya, as well as red bananas (the sweetest of them all).

2. The bread is not the regular, sugary, airy white sliced crap you often find at breakfast buffets. They also have Burgen fruit and muesli bread, which is delicious as well as filling. And they have yummy Lurpak butter.

3. There is cake!

4. They have filtered coffee, which is better than many other options (although I’m currently off coffee, so have been getting a pot of tea which comes with a cute little yellow tag).

It also helps that the tables look over the calm blue waters of the Dili seaside, making it a really nice place to start the day.

It’s not really your weekend brunch destination, but for a “school day”, it’s a lovely, healthy, sunny option.