Bircher than thou, a healing breakfast

Enriched Birchermüesli, with mikan orange, aloe vera… and a ginger zinger. Don’t go to imagine that I eat breakfast like what people call breakfast or that I need to heal for something. It’s for my 12 noon, and I really like this.

Müesli sounds like mou (soft, squashy, sluggish in French) and that’s what it means in Swiss dialect.
Surprisingly there is nothing “mou” in most dishes/products presented as muesli over the world. Usually it’s granola, which is a different animal.

Of course granola can be great, for instance the Garden’s Kitchen home-made granola “Mama’s muesli”. It looks deliciously sweet and crispy. Too tempting. I’d empty the jar in one sitting. What did I type “sitting” ? Standing bare feet in the night in front of the cupboard, like a thief or a mouse. You got it, I can’t stock granola.

All that just to say, it’s not “mou“.

That’s my muesli mou. And some days, I want to eat “mou”

The Dr Bircher was living over 100 years ago, when TB was a common occurrence they couldn’t cure. They hoped affected people would heal… His work was about making patients get stronger by active outdoor life in mountains and diets rich in raw fruits. Obvious for us, but that was very innovative in his time.

If that interests you, also see the Budwig cream (click here).

Not sure I believe in the claimed health effects, but that’s surely better than having a few fast-food donuts…

Traditional Birchermüesli :

2 hours (or the night) before :

1 tbs of oatmeal + 3 tbs of cold water

(ok, that was 2 tbs…)

1 grated apple

1 ts lemon juice

Sudachi lemon.

After 2 hours :

The muesli is very creamy and it has turned the water into oat milk.

When serving :

1 ts condensed milk

That’s yogurt. I let it age and eat it well fermented, 2 weeks after sell-by date. I didn’t add sugar as there are many sweet fruits.

1 ts ground hazelnuts or almonds

Crushed walnuts. And the topping almonds.

Adding more fruits is optional. I I arranged it at my taste with the supply I had :

Raisin and goji berries.

Fresh fruits are optional. Aloe is not a fruit, but I like it.

Cut in cubes. I sprinkled a little Okinawan kurozato (black sugar) :

Final touch : toasted almonds and a few pinches of powdered ginger. Mmmmmm….

The simplest oat cookie (via Gourmande in Osaka)

Last year…

Preparation : 2 minutes Cooking : 5 minutes Ingredients : A: 35 g of rolled oats 1/2 tbs of dried currants 1 egg white B (toppings) 5 g of rolled oats 1/2 tbs of dried currants Reduce the oats and currants of A into powder. Mix to the egg white. Add the topping currants to the mix. Form 4 cookies on a baking sheet. Cover them with oats. Bake 5 minutes in the oven-toaster. C152.1 F3.2g C27.8g P8.2g … Read More

via Gourmande in Osaka

Strawberry azuki coffee cake

This month’s Daring Baker Challenge is hosted by Jamie of Life’s a Feast and Ria of Ria’s Collection.
The topic is Mets la main à la pâte! YEASTED MERINGUE COFFEE CAKE.
The others’ cakes and the recipes are here (click).

I used the home-bakery and surdough I had to make a light brioche dough. The particularity was the raw meringue filling.

Sweet azuki beans, strawberry and brandy soaked dry fruits.

Chinois lost in translation and in photo rendition

This sweet bread, this brioche is a chinois in my old country. Chinois means Chinese, and also complicated -like Chinese languages. That’s why… No, no. Here is the real story :
Once upon a time, it was called Schneckenkuchen, snail-cake. A German name because all those surdough cakes come from Wien Austria, via Germany. Back then everybody could speak German, or they pretended, or they would just shut it up.
But some Parisians came, ate the cake and like it. He asked :
“-C’est quoi ?
-Un Schneckenkuchen, Monsieur.
-Un quoi ?
-Un Schneck… OK, un chinois.”
So the name was changed into chinois.
And inside, the stuffing of custard cream and rum raisin was changed into better versions, one for each baker.

I hoped it would be more photogenic.
You can see it is rolled and stuff ? Yes, my sweet bread is white.
A “light version”.It is sourdough based, with flour, eggs, rice bran, a little sugar and butter. I let it raise overnight in the fridge.

And the stuffing white, like this… white on white, I know.

The stuffing is made of :

Dry fruit mix, that I cut finely (too fine for you to see. And diced almonds, honey, brandy, tea, melted butter. All together, one night. That becomes a sweet paste.

I rolled it as a cylinder, then as a big snail. Kurozato (black sugar), almonds, butter on top.

Healing soup, from roots to fruits

You can always have a little bowl of soup. This one is so tasty. The fruit flavor balances the strength of the medicinal roots.

This ugly hairy carrot is the famous ginseng. That cures everything. It’s famous for that.

Ginger. Raw ginger is a good food for digestion, for nausea, everything related.

Banana and yuzu cure nothing, but they are like chicken soup, they can’t do bad. And they taste good.
As you can see, I’ve found a stash of vintage bananas. They discount them terribly, while ironically, I’d be ready to pay more to get them like that.
I added a few spoons of sliced almonds before juicing, so they brought some milky feeling.