After a visit to the grocery store, I bought some Belgian Endives, with no idea how to prepare them at all. After looking up a few recipes with them, I noticed quite a few involved steaming the endives and cooking it with chickpeas. I decided to throw some kidney beans into the dish as well, just for the sake of variety.

In a small pot, take about 1/2 a cup of rehydrated chickpeas and boil them with just enough stock to submerge them. After boiling for about 15 minutes, the chickpeas should be slightly soft. After separating the leaves of the endives, place them on top of the chickpeas, adding tablespoons of stock as required. Once they have cooked throughly, crack an egg on top and steam until the egg white turns opaque. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper, and that’s it!

Chickpea, Kidney Bean and Steamed Endives

Eggs in the Basket

Unsure of what to have for breakfast this morning, I asked Jamie and she suggested that I make eggs in the basket, but the way that she usually makes it. Normally, eggs in a basket is a slice of bread with a hole punched out of it. The slice is then placed on a frying pan with some butter, lightly toasted, flipped and then an egg is cracked in the middle of it and is cooked sunny side up.

Jamie’s method is to simply press an indent in the centre of the bread (so that no bread is wasted), spread butter around the indent, crack the egg in the indent and bake. This method gives you baked eggs, which are much softer and fluffier than a fried egg. Just remember to keep track of the yolk so that it doesn’t get overcooked and solidify!

For breakfast today, I made omurice which is a portmanteau of the words omelette and rice. It’s a Japanese dish that is basically fried rice wrapped in a thin sheet of egg.

Omurice

Here’s (roughly) how I made mine:

• 1/2 cup steamed rice, cooled off
• 2 button mushrooms, chopped
• tablespoon green onions, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• tablespoon ketchup
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup milk
• salt
• pepper
• vegetable oil

At medium heat, add the oil and garlic, sautee until slightly brown. Add rice and stir until the rice is heated up again (cooling it off first prevents it from getting all mushy in the stir-frying process). Finally, add mushrooms, green onions, salt, pepper, ketchup and whatever other spices you want to add to the rice. Once all the ingredients are cooked, set the rice aside. Whisk the egg and milk together and pour it into the pan so that it makes a nice thin layer of egg. Once the egg is solidified throughout (flipping is optional), add the rice on one side and fold the other half of the egg over.

Serves one.

More Omurice

Toast and Eggs with Soy Sauce and Pepper

Back when I was young, every Saturday morning my dad would always make toast and eggs with soy sauce and pepper. A really simple dish, but one I always loved because I loved the runny egg yolk and it was fun to eat since you get to dip the bread and soak it all up. These days my dad doesn’t make it for me anymore, since it is so simple, so I just make it myself. Instead he now makes congee with vegetable medley (frozen), century egg, and regular egg. These two dishes will forever be my Saturday morning comfort foods.

For lunch, I prepared mango fried rice. Fried rice is one of those dishes that you can pretty much make with anything in your fridge. I bought mangoes with the intention of making mango fried rice, diced them up and added tofu, mushroom, green onion, egg and vegetarian Vietnamese sausage. With a bit of salt (or soy sauce) and pepper for seasoning it’s a great combination of savoury flavours and the sweet flavour of mango.

Diced Ingredients

Adding the Egg

Mango Fried Rice