Sunday Brunch

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A colorful selection of tasty treats for your Sunday and Easter brunches (Rcp# 35 and 36)

Set-up for the ‘Sunday Brunch’

All this goes really well with an assortment of your favorite breads and buns (buy or make, ours will contain multi-flour homemade sweet buns, a wholegrain spelt bread – baked by my husband -, and chestnut crisp bread)

Mossy Slabs

Ingredients for ‘Mossy Slabs’

For the ‘Slabs’ (galettes):

  • 30 g whole or chopped pistachios (peeled, of course, about 4 tablespoons whole)
  • 60 g whole pumpkin seeds (about 6 tablespoons whole seeds, you can also use ground seeds and adjust the amount according to the weight)
  • 120 g whole buckwheat (about 10 tablespoons whole seeds)
  • 8 tablespoons apple pulp (pure high quality apple sauce without any additives or water, see [‘The Apple Pulp Connection’])
  • 100 ml cold drinking water (12 – 14 tablespoons)
  • 3 tablespoons canola oil
  • Also: 3 tablespoons oat yogurt mixed with 5 tablespoons drinking water

For the ‘Moss’ (filling between two ‘Slabs’, per 1000 ml lasagna dish, you need two)

  • 1 – 2 handfuls of sprouts (30 – 50 g), I use home-grown red radish sprouts and kale sprouts mixed 3/1
  • 1 – 2 teaspoons of finely chopped chives
  • 75 g cream cheese (plant-based, about 5 tablespoons)
  • 200 g oat yogurt (about 10 tablespoons)
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • A hunch of freshly ground nutmeg (very little please)

Preparations for ‘Mossy Slabs’

For the ‘Slabs’ aka galettes:

  1. Turn the pistachios, pumpkin seeds, and buckwheat into a smooth flour mixture. To do this, grind the whole ingredients of the trio in a suitable blender/grinder.
  2. Add canola oil, apple pulp and water and mix well, then let rest in a cold place (refrigerator) for 30-60 minutes.
  3. Add the water-yogurt mixture and stir again. The dough should now have a perfect pancake consistency (‘like good wall paint’, a friend of mine always says)
  4. Heat a non-stick pan that works without oil to a low to medium temperature.
  5. Put two small amounts of galette dough into the pan (about 1 tablespoon per small galette). Wait until you can move the galettes without overcooking them. If they brown too fast, lower the temperature.

Important: The whole dough does not like hot temperatures. It needs to settle and brown slowly! This requires patience. The good thing is that you can actually pre-bake the galettes, let them cool completely and store them in a box in the fridge a day or two ahead to reheat them on the day of the brunch.

For the ‘Moss’/filling:

  1. Gently chop the sprouts a little with a cradle knife so that they do not intertwine during baking. If you do not have a cradle knife, simply place the portion for one pan on a large cutting board, cover with a clean cloth, and gently press together with another cutting board or a board(platter with similar flat surface. Then crosscut the sprout mat you have in a narrow checkerboard pattern. This should give you relatively even pieces of sprout.
  2. Coat the two lasagna pans with canola oil. Before turning on the oven to preheat to 125°C fan assisted heating plus top and bottom heat, remove the rack. This is important because some lasagna pans crack when placed on a hot rack in the oven.
  3. Place the chopped sprouts and chopped chives in the oiled pans and top with the oat yogurt and cream cheese. Add salt and nutmeg and mix by gently mixing in with a tablespoon or fork.
  4. Place the oven rack in the middle of the oven and immediately place the two lasagna dishes with the filling on it.
  5. Bake the filling in the oven for 30-35 minutes, then remove and serve on the warm galettes (the galettes can be baked fresh or warmed up along with the filling, e.g. in the last 8-10 minutes).

Helen’s Roasted Pears

Ingredients for ‘Helen’s Roasted Pears’

For the Chocolate Cream:

  • 100 ml cold drinking water
  • 3 tablespoons oat yogurt
  • 1 package chocolate pudding powder (adequate amount for 500 ml milk or vegetable drink)
  • 5 tablespoons coconut blossom sugar
  • 1 tablespoon mildly de-oiled cacao
  • 150 g coconut yogurt (about 12 – 14 tablespoons)

For the Roasted Pears

  • 3-4 pears, firm enough to hold in the oven.
  • 2 teaspoons rice syrup
  • 1 teaspoon lime juice

Preparations for ‘Helen’s Roasted Pears’

For the Chocolate Cream

  1. Mix drinking water and oat yogurt thoroughly, then add chocolate pudding powder and coconut blossom sugar. When everything is evenly dissolved, stir in the mildly de-oiled cocoa until you have a smooth sauce.
  2. Bring 200 ml of water to a boil in a saucepan.
  3. Turn the heat to low and add the mixture. Simmer at lowest possible heat for about two minutes (barely bubbling), stirring constantly (be careful, it burns easily). Then turn off the heat and immediately remove the pudding pot from the heat source. Continue turning gently until the mixture is even and begins to thicken noticeably.
  4. Pour the hot pudding into a heat-resistant bowl (place on a wet cloth) and allow the pudding to cool to hand-warm. Then turn to make sure there is no ‘skin’ on the top of the bowl and let cool to lukewarm.
  5. Add the oat yogurt, stir gently and store in a cool place.

For the Roasted Pears:

  1. Wash the pears. Leave the skin on and cut them diagonally into thick slices ‘baguette style’ (for larger and more stable slices, you cut a baguette at an angle).
  2. Remove the seeds and any hard or blemished parts.
  3. Grease a baking pan or lasagna dish and place the pear slices generously in the dish. Make sure the slices do not overlap too much.
  4. Remove the rack from the oven and heat the oven to 150°C (fan assisted heating plus top and bottom heat). Place the rack in the oven at medium height and place the pan/lasagna dish in the oven.
  5. Bake the pears for 15 – 20 minutes on each side (depending on the thickness of the slices). You will know they are done when they begin to smell delicious and are soft as butter when cut.
  6. Allow the pears to cool to lukewarm before serving with the chocolate cream.

Side Notes:

  1. One really important thing about measuring: I actually use international standardized spoon measures. If you do not have them, note that regular tablespoons are usually a relatively good measure when it comes to liquids. For flours, etc., you need to be moderate in your measurements. Also, a teaspoon is one-third of a tablespoon.
  2. I named this galette dish after a plant that is as humble as it is amazing. It takes over the most unusual places, covering worn, broken and discarded things and turning them into beautiful little gardens and precious carpets of tiny flowers. It also provides excellent insulation on green roofs.
  3. When I was a kid, my dad made ‘Poire Belle Helene’ for us. At first, the idea of putting something delicious like chocolate pudding on top of a ‘boring’ pear seemed a little unnecessary. I quickly settled on the mix. For this recipe I changed the pear to a roasted version because – just like a very good apple ([see the Ingredient Special on Boskoop Apples ‘Chubby-Cheeked Nobility‘]) – a pear really tastes like a pear when you give it some warmth.
  4. I think ‘Helen’s Roasted Pears’ is a perfect Easter dish because it contains chocolate (typical Easter tradition) and the pear almost looks like an egg. 😉
  5. Of course, there are other ways to make this brunch even bigger, besides expanding the amounts in the recipes and the group of friends and family you invite. Check out my recipes, I’m sure you’ll find some more (for example, [‘Cousin Herb’] is always up for a good party.)
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Please note: For all my recipes (text) on this blog (By MagS, Parsley-Lane Blog) I grant a CC license under the terms of BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). For further explanations, please see the Legal Notice or visit creativecommons.org.