Gill Books 12 Feasts of Christmas: All Day Breakfast/Brunch

Introducing the Gill Books 12 Feasts of Christmas, we are celebrating the festive season with 12 feasts featuring recipes from our wonderful authors. Recipes that will impress the visitors, cure any overindulgence, sustain you, help you celebrate in style and most importantly, taste delicious. First up, we have recipes that are perfect for all day Christmas breakfast/brunch. Maybe even dinner if you’re feeling especially lazy and want to curl up with a good boxset or Christmas movie.

Baked beans with chorizo, egg and feta

This first recipe is taken from The Ketogenic Kitchen by Domini Kemp and Patricia Daly, who have both recently come through cancer, have discovered a life-changing way of eating. In The Ketogenic Kitchen they share with you exciting nutritional developments, which reveal that a diet low in carbohydrates and high in fat, in conjunction with the treatment recommended by medical professionals, offers new hope in the support of and protection against many chronic illnesses.

This is also excellent for dinner and is usually my ‘OMG, there’s no food in the house’ kind of supper.

1 chorizo sausage, diced (200g)
2 large onions, finely chopped (300g)
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped (12g)
Few sprigs of thyme or rosemary, chopped (4g)
80ml red wine vinegar (80g)
4 tbsp tomato purée (204g)
2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes (800g)
Salt and pepper (3g)
1 x 400g tin of cannellini beans, (drained and rinsed (drained weight 246g)
8 large eggs (544g)
Splash of olive oil (4.2g)
200g pack of feta (approx.) (200g)

Serves 4

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Sauté the chorizo in a large frying pan that can go into the oven until the chorizo is starting to caramelise. It does release lots of fat, which you can leave in there for extra unctuousness. Add the onions and continue to sauté until they too are just starting to colour. Add the garlic, herbs, red wine vinegar, tomato purée and tomatoes. Mix well, season and cook for another few minutes.

When everything feels well blended, take it off the heat and mix in the cannellini beans. Make eight wells or holes in the beans and crack an egg into each well. Drizzle with a little olive oil, crumble the feta on top, season with lots of black pepper and bake for 15 minutes or so, until the eggs are just cooked.

PER PORTION
_ NET CARBS 36.9G 21%
_ PROTEIN 44.8G 26%
_ FAT 39.0G 52%
FIBRE 7.1G
CALORIES 676

Chocolate Berry Pancakes

This recipe is from the No. 1 bestseller Natural Born Feeder by Rozanna Purcell. Roz’s approach to cooking is simple: use whole foods to live a whole life. For Roz a healthy lifestyle isn’t about extremes, it’s about balance. Having developed a negative relationship with food that led her to make unhealthy choices, she changed her lifestyle by rediscovering her love of cooking. Roz used her passion for food to develop the most amazing recipes that fuel the body, providing the energy and vitality needed to look and feel great.

Berries and chocolate are a perfect combination for a breakfast favourite – the pancake stack! Paired with this quick berry sauce and creamy Greek yoghurt, you would never guess it’s 100% healthy.

Serves 1

3 heaped tbsp coconut flour
3 tsp stevia
1 tsp raw cacao powder
1 tsp raw carob or cacao powder
½ tsp gluten-free baking powder
2 eggs
2 egg whites
80ml coconut milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
375g berries (I use raspberries and blueberries)
coconut oil, for frying
4 tbsp Greek yoghurt or dairy-free yoghurt, to serve (optional)

Gluten free, Paleo and Dairy free if you use non-dairy yoghurt

Place the coconut flour, 2 teaspoons of the stevia, the cacao powder, carob powder and baking powder in a large bowl and mix together.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the whole eggs, egg whites, coconut milk and vanilla. Using a fork, mix this into the dry ingredients until a smooth batter forms. Cut 100g of the berries in half and stir them into the batter.

Melt a little coconut oil in a non-stick frying pan over a high heat. Spoon in 3 tablespoons of the batter at a time and smooth it out with the back of the spoon, then immediately reduce the heat to medium. Cook for 4–5 minutes, until the base is set.

Flip it over and cook for a further 4–5 minutes, until cooked through. Repeat with the remaining batter. To make the berry sauce, place the rest of the berries in a bowl and microwave on high for 2 minutes, checking them after the first minute and stirring. Add the remaining teaspoon of stevia and mix using a fork.

To serve, place one pancake on a plate and add a spoonful of the berry sauce and a tablespoon of Greek yoghurt on top. Continue layering with more pancakes, berry sauce and yoghurt, finishing with some berry sauce poured over the stack.

Turkish eggs menemen

Discover a new way of eating with Brother Hubbard’s fresh, pure flavours dedicated to sharing and happiness. Leaning towards aspects of Middle Eastern and Southern Mediterranean food, The Brother Hubbard Cookbook is packed with nutritious, wholesome, often deceptively vegetarian dishes that emphasise flavour, colour and texture.

A vibrant, beautiful dish, this is ideal as a brunch or supper. This is perhaps our single most popular dish on our menu. I first came across a version of it when working in Julio in Melbourne and then was lucky enough to visit Istanbul to try the authentic version as the locals eat it.

This version is our own take on it. It really is a taste sensation, with the spinach and herbs adding so much freshness and vibrancy to counterbalance the richness of the eggs.

Serves 2 hungry people

1 batch of tomato and pepper sauce (recipe below)
4 eggs
50ml cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
4 slices of good bread
knob of butter, softened
2 small handfuls of baby spinach leaves
6–8 Kalamata olives, pitted and sliced (optional)
For the onion chilli herb mix:
ùù ½ small or medium red onion
1 medium red chilli
20g fresh mint
20g fresh parsley
10g fresh dill or coriander

For the feta yogurt

50g feta cheese
100g plain yogurt

First make the sauce as per the recipe below, then remove the sauce from the heat and set aside – it’s best added to the dish when it’s quite warm but not boiling.

While the sauce is simmering away, cut the red onion into the finest dice you can manage – ideally about the size of the head of a match! Cut the top off the chilli, remove the seeds with a teaspoon and then dice the chilli very finely too, similar in size to the onion. Finely chop the stems of the herbs (except the mint), then give the leafy bits a medium chop. Mix the onion, chilli and herbs together and set aside.
Make the feta yogurt by crumbling the feta into the yogurt and adding some black pepper (you don’t need salt because the feta is already quite salty).

Now you’re ready for the final steps. Crack the eggs into a bowl with the cream. Whisk well and add a little salt and pepper. Heat a frying pan over a medium-high heat. When it’s good and hot, add a dash of olive oil. You should be warming your plates and toasting your bread at this point too. Pour in the eggs and let them sit for about 20 seconds before stirring to scramble them. This dish is to be cooked very quickly, so keep scrambling. When they are nearly fully cooked but the egg is still glistening, add the tomato and pepper sauce, mixing well, and scramble further for another 20–30 seconds.

To serve, spread the toast with some butter or a drizzle of olive oil and put on each warm plate with a small handful of baby spinach leaves on top. Divide the scrambled eggs between each plate. Top with a dessertspoon of the feta yogurt, scatter over the sliced olives, if using, and finish with a few spoons of the onion chilli herb mix.

TIPS AND TRICKS

This is an ideal vegetarian breakfast, brunch, lunch or supper dish, but you can add smoked salmon or pan-fried chorizo on the side to make it a more substantial meal (the chorizo goes particularly well).

Tomato and pepper sauce

This sauce is so versatile that it’s well worth making more than one batch – you’ll see that we use it a lot throughout this book! See the tips and tricks for lots of ideas.

1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
ùù 1 dessertspoon oil
4 fresh tomatoes, diced into 1cm cubes (or 200g tinned chopped tomatoes)
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
pinch of caster sugar (optional)

Wash each pepper, cut them in half from stem to tail and remove the seeds and stalk, then cut across into 1cm-thick slices. Heat the oil in a saucepan set over a medium heat, then add the peppers and cook for 10 minutes with the lid on, until they’re soft but not falling apart (you want there to be a slight bite). Add the tomatoes to the pan once the peppers are cooked and cook for a further 5–8 minutes, with the lid off, until the tomatoes are softened and you have a chunky-style sauce (if you are using tinned tomatoes, you might need to cook it for about 5 minutes longer so the sauce reduces). Add your spices and cook for a further 2 minutes. Now taste the sauce, adding more spice, salt, pepper or even a little pinch of sugar if you feel it needs it. It should be a wonderfully rich and flavourful sauce. Stored in an airtight container, this sauce will keep in the fridge for 4 days or up to 2 months in the freezer.

TIPS AND TRICKS

This pepper and tomato sauce is incredibly versatile. It’s the base for our Turkish eggs menemen and our shakshuka baked eggs (page 72 of The Brother Hubbard Cookbook), so make a double batch so that you can make one of the other dishes in a jiffy. We also use it with our savoury beghrir pancakes (page 42 of The Brother Hubbard Cookbook).

The sauce is also amazing in an omelette or as a sauce to serve warm alongside our tortilla (page 117 of The Brother Hubbard Cookbook) or as the base for Itzi’s cod stew (page 242 of The Brother Hubbard Cookbook). It could also feature as a nice sauce for pasta, perhaps with some pan-fried chorizo added, on top of a baked potato or to serve alongside any grilled fish or meat.

French Toast with Bacon and Maple Syrup Ice-cream

This next breakfast/brunch recipe from Sophie White’s Recipes for A Nervous Breakdown is boldly beautiful. Perfect for Christmas eating with friends. Warning: you may spend the rest of the day on the couch after wolfing this down.

Part cookbook, part memoir, part self-help manual, Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown is a hilarious and refreshingly honest take on the life of a modern millennial woman – the perfect kitchen companion for laughing about the silly stuff, crying about the sad stuff, staring down our own personal madness and getting on with it (all while eating some delicious food along the way).

Very, very occasionally Himself gets on a healthy eating jag. Allow me to set the scene. It is 3.30 in the morning. The floor is littered with the detritus of a drunkenly conceived takeaway. Himself is on the couch and has assumed a position that in our house we call Level 10. Don’t be getting excited now, there is nothing remotely amorous about Level 10. It is the final stage of sitting before you could be considered supine. The chin is resting on the chest, limp arms lie beside the torso – which is occupying the seat portion of the couch as opposed to the usual back section – and the legs trail lifelessly to the floor.

‘I’m starting boot camp,’ he announces. I respond incredulously: ‘You just complimented the girl in Luigi’s on her new haircut, meaning you know the staff of our local takeaway well enough to keep track of their hairstyles.’ ‘Shmalls the moor paison,’ he says, which I interpret as ‘all the more reason’. Immediately, I know that he must be stopped. Improved diet and exercise leads to more energy, and for the sake of our marriage I need to keep him doughy and lethargic – and probably not use these adjectives to describe him. No one can resist this frankly outrageous breakfast of ice cream and bacon.

Serves 2

Ice cream

500ml cream
200ml milk
200ml tinned condensed milk
5 cloves
100ml maple syrup
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
5 egg yolks
30g caster sugar

French toast

3 eggs
125ml milk
-lots of butter, for cooking (no point in holding back on this one, you’re already eating ice cream for breakfast)
4 thick slices of good white bread
lots of crispy bacon, to serve

To make the ice cream, put the cream, milk, condensed milk, cloves, maple syrup, bay leaf and nutmeg into a saucepan and bring to the boil, then remove from the heat and leave to infuse for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar for 4 minutes until the mixture is very pale and has the consistency of whipped cream. Pour the cream-and-milk mixture into the egg mixture through a sieve, then stir to combine. Pour this custard-like mixture into a clean saucepan and heat over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Leave to cool, pour it into a container and place it in the freezer.

Over the next 2–3 hours take the ice cream out of the freezer every 30 minutes or so and stir well to break up the ice crystals. A hand-held blender is good for this, and an ice-cream maker is even better, if you have one.

When your ice cream is ready it is time for ‘Operation Plumpington’ (making the French toast) to commence. Whisk the eggs and milk together until combined. Melt about a tablespoon of butter in a non-stick frying pan over a medium–high heat. Dip the slices of bread in the egg mixture and then fry until golden and crispy on both sides. Serve the French toast with the bacon and ice cream.

Prefer video recipes? Check out Sophie making this dish below.

We hope that you found some inspiration for your all day Christmas breakfast/brunch! Happy feasting to you and yours, stay tuned for more fantastically festive recipes. Follow us @GillBooks on Twitter, @gillbooks on Instagram and like us on Facebook for the latest author news.