Mr Gochugaru and I had a wander around Sloane Square after church on yesterday. Pavilion Road, conveniently situated near Sloane Square tube station and Peter Jones, is a one-stop shopping street for anyone looking for good things to eat.
We bought wholemeal sourdough, croissants and brioche buns at Bread Ahead, had Sunday roast lunch at Jason Atherton’s Three Darlings (named for his three daughters), followed by two scoops of gelato at Ice Cream Union. That’s two scoops each, which was our reward for getting to the end of a long week looking out for and looking after the people around us.
We dropped by David Mellor, the Conran Shop and also the Saatchi Gallery. What I did not do was to step into Ottolenghi. This is an amazing emporium of ready-prepared food but I am keeping that for another day, when perhaps I have done double baby-holding sessions with the grand-babies.
It’s now Monday morning and the start of a new week. I love granola for breakfast and have tried every brand and type available: basic supermarket, luxury deli, hotel-made, farm-made and even some from when I travel overseas.
One or two have been good, most have been lacking/ over-done but none has been perfect. In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Goldilocks managed to find the perfect chair, porridge and bed, but to find my perfect granola I would have to make my own. Bespoke is the way to go.
This is very much a first attempt at making an in-house granola, using what I had in the cupboards on a Sunday evening when the shops were shut. I generally don’t like dried fruit in my cereals and try instead to have some fresh fruit at breakfast. The worst dried fruit I had in a granola was dried mulberries which were hard as bullets. They had to be fished out lest I cracked a tooth on it.
I have just had a spoonful of the granola to check again and it does pass the initial tests: suitably crunchy, no hard bits, no dried fruit that sticks to the teeth, no annoying sunflower seeds and most crucially it is not too sweet.
The recipe below makes around 600 g of granola. I used Flahavan’s organic porridge oats as a base. They also make organic jumbo oats and I may try that for Granola Number 2. Oats are a super food and here is an article from the NY Times on why.
Granola Number 1
Dry ingredients:
300 g wholegrain rolled oats (I used Flavahan’s brand)
100 g pecan nuts
75 g pumpkin seeds
50 g cashew nuts
50 g desiccated coconut
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
Wet ingredients:
90 g maple syrup
75 g runny honey
6 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
You will also need a large baking tray, lined with baking paper.
How to Make:
Preheat the oven to 125 C fan/ 140 C electric.
Roughly break the pecans and cashew nuts with your fingers, or roughly chop with a knife.
Place the nuts, oats, pumpkin seeds, coconut and salt into a large mixing bowl.
Place all the wet ingredients (syrup, honey, water, oils) into a small pot and warm through.
When this is ready, pour over the oats and mix thoroughly with a large metal spoon or a silicon spatula.
Spread the granola mixture in a thin layer on the lined baking tray. If your tray is too small then use two trays so that the granola can bake properly in the oven.
Bake for an initial 20 minutes, then using the large metal spoon, mix the granola so that it bakes evenly.
Continue baking for a further 20 minutes (total time is 40 minutes).
Remove the tray from the oven and let the granola cool right down before storing in a suitable container.
If you like dried fruit in your granola, then add this after the granola has baked.
This morning we had a lovely breakfast of granola with yogurt and blueberries. I also love croissants, something I am loathe to admit to the doctor, and we had this with some jam. I never know what each hour, day or week brings, so my thoughts always is that it’s better to eat something good ahead of time.
Granola in stages before baking: in a bowl, mixed up and with syrup added
My idea for Granola Number 2 would be to swap skinless hazelnuts for the cashew nuts and flaked coconut for desiccated coconut. I may as well add here that I am not keen on whole skinned almonds in granola so I may try skinned and chopped almonds instead.