Showing posts with label brunch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brunch. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Fancy Brunch Canapes - Enoki Tacos with Orange Hollandaise

Fancy Brunch Canapes - Enoki Tacos with Orange Hollandaise

Most weekends, I try to do something a little different for breakfast. Oats is a work day food, so the weekend needs to be a bit more playful! That'll mean different things, depending on time, how much I need to do grocery shopping, how much I'm feeling the night before...that sort of thing. I woke up on Saturday hungry - but not knowing what I feel like. Lance is generally unhelpful when you ask him what he wants for meals. "Whatever you feel like making", is a fairly common response. I was at a loss for ideas, so I looked in the fridge for inspiration.

5 egg yolks that needed using fairly soon. Half a packet of enoki mushrooms. Half a packet of tortillas. Bam! Inspired. I would whip up a Hollandaise sauce, adding orange from the few ripe ones recently fallen from our tree. I'd sautee up the mushrooms with a few fresh herbs. And I'd make tacos. For fun and presentation, I cut mini tortillas out of the larger sized ones before toasting a little of the stale out of them. Like this, they make a wonderful canape. Elegant and simple. But you can be lazy and have normal sized tacos if that's more your speed. Or you can make your own smaller sized ones to start with.

Either way, start to finish, this takes around 10 minutes to make, and is a bloody delicious way to start the day, if I do say so myself. (Lance said so too, if that sways you!)

And if you are serving this for brunch, a glass of bubbles to drink with it certainly wouldn't go astray!
Fancy Brunch Canapes - Enoki Tacos with Orange Hollandaise
Fancy Brunch Canapes - Enoki Tacos with Orange Hollandaise
Fancy Brunch Canapes - Enoki Tacos with Orange Hollandaise


Orange Hollandaise Sauce

5 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tsp Tabasco sauce
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
zest from 1 orange
6 tablespoons softened butter

Set up a double-boiler with a small saucepan with a few inches of water, and a glass bowl for the top that won't touch the water. Bring the water to a simmer while you whisk together the egg yolks until lightened in colour and thickened, about 2 minutes. Whisk in the salt, Tabasco sauce, orange zest and orange juice until well combined.

Place the glass bowl over the simmering water and whisk. The eggs will lighten and thicken to a custard like consistency. One tablespoon at a time, whisk in the butter, allowing it to fully incorporate before adding the next one.

Take off the heat, taste for seasoning - adding extra salt or Tabasco as required. Cover and set aside.
Fancy Brunch Canapes - Enoki Tacos with Orange Hollandaise


Enoki Mushroom Tacos

1/2 packet of Enoki mushrooms
small handful snow pea shoots
small handful of basil leaves
bunch of coriander, finely choppeed
1 spring onion, finely sliced
to serve
5 tortillas
Orange Hollandaise Sauce
smoked paprika for dusting

Heat a non-stick frypan to medium heat. Chop the bottom off of the enoki mushrooms and discard. Separate the clumps a little. If making mini-tacos, cut the enoki in half. Add the mushrooms and spring onion. Stir frequently witha wooden spoon, breaking the mushrooms apart more as you go.

When the mushrooms are wilted and browning slightly, add the basil leaves, coriander and snow pea shoots. Stir well to combine and take off the heat.

Serve the mushroom mix on a tortilla with a generous dollop of orange hollandaise sauce and dust with smoked paprika.
Fancy Brunch Canapes - Enoki Tacos with Orange Hollandaise
Fancy Brunch Canapes - Enoki Tacos with Orange Hollandaise

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple

Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple

There’s a restaurant in Perth that sells dessert nachos. Whilst dessert pizzas are a bit of a thing these days, I’d never heard of dessert nachos before. Whilst I haven’t had them, the description was unsalted tortilla chips with fruit sauces (strawberry and mango if I recall correctly) that are designed to look like salsa and cheese. It sounds delicious, and it sounds like something I’ll definitely be wanting to try at some point BUT it got me to thinking – why plain tortilla chips? Why not flavoured? That could be a thing, yeah?

I decided upon trying my hand at chocolate tortillas. And then I decided I wanted to make dessert tacos, instead of nachos. If I’m making the tortillas fresh, I might as well eat them fresh, too, right? We don’t often eat dessert in my house. Occasionally there’ll be a bowl of ice cream, but more often than not if there’s sweets after dinner it’s just some squares of chocolate or something snacky like that. I just can’t be bothered making dessert for two of us, especially on weeknights. So the obvious next choice for dessert tacos was as a lovely breakfast or brunch spread. You surely all know by now that I love breakfast!

The fillings for the tacos were mainly based on things I had in the house already and things that work for breakfast. The combination of which would feel decadent, but not super rich. I wanted it to be basically a healthy breakfast. Knowing that I had two different types of homemade caramel sauce ready to go in the fridge (the caramel sauce from my pavlova and a homemade dulce de leche) the other accompaniments had to have minimal sweetness. Even the tortillas themselves had minimal sugar to keep them fairly neutral (but chocolatey!). Add Philly cream cheese for dairy, peanut butter, fresh banana, toasted walnuts, cacao nibs and a spiced apple mix and it made a pretty awesome DIY taco bar. My favourite combination was cream cheese, dulche de leche, spiced apple and walnuts. Feel free to add whatever other fillings you have on hand. Strawberries or blueberries would be amazing. Nutella to ramp up the chocolate factor. Cream and Ice Cream if you want to forego the illusion of healthy.

This makes a lot more tortillas than 2 people need for brunch. But the leftovers make amazing chocolate tortilla chips. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar!
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple

Chocolate Tortillas

3 cups masa harina
¾ tsp salt
¼ cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 1/3 cups warm water

Whisk together the masa, salt, sugar and cocoa powder until completely combined. Add the warm water, starting with the two cups and knead until it becomes a smooth, slightly tacky ball. Set aside to rest for 10 minutes.

Heat a pan to medium high heat

Grab two bits of baking paper about the size of a tray. Pick up golf ball size pieces of dough, roll into balls, then place between the two bits of paper and roll out with a rolling pin into a tortilla.

Gently peel the tortilla off the paper and place in the hot pan. Flip after 30 seconds, cook for 45 seconds (it will puff up), flip and cook for another 30 seconds. Set in a shallow flat bowl (or plate) lined with a clean kitchen towel and cover to keep warm.

Repeat for the remaining tortillas.

Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple


Spiced Apple

3 pink lady apples, finely diced
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Juice half orange
1 tbsp maple syrup

Stir the orange juice, maple syrup, vanilla and spices together in a small saucepan. Add the apple pieces and stir to coat. Place over low heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the apple has softened, but still holds it’s shape

Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced AppleBrunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple
Brunch Stars - Chocolate Taco Bar featuring Chocolate Tortillas and Spiced Apple