Sunday, February 14, 2010

Maple Oatmeal Breakfast Risotto

For Valentine's day, I always try and make some kind of favourite or special food for each meal of the day.  With it falling on a Sunday this year, making a real breakfast (not the rushed kind that precedes getting everyone out the door on typical work/school days) was a welcome change.  When I was browsing a new blog a few weeks ago, I found both a new blog and a new recipe, (surprise surprise, I know) that was perfect to repeat for today. The original was posted on a previous valentine's day, so it seemed very fitting to make again for my sweethearts on valentine's day.  The red berries against the creamy grains seem very fitting  indeed.  If you like cooked grain breakfast cereals, you are in for a treat.  We love oatmeal in our house(my hubbie insists on calling it Porridge).  This takes our humble oatmeal to a whole new level.  Creamy and just subtly sweet, it is a definite breakfast indulgence, and the cooking method is totally hands off, which is another bonus. This “risotto” is cooked in a rice cooker, and  I imagine it could be cooked on the stove-top as well.
(With the mess my rice cooker made on my counter this time, I think the next time I make it I may try a stove top method, wow, what a mess! )I will post the results and cooking times as soon as I try it!

I eliminated a cup of water from the recipe, as I feel this was the issue.  The recipe below is changed already, the original one is here.

I made this this morning, while my sweethearts were in my craft room, making me ultra sweet valentines day cards, do I have great guys, or what!



Yummy Maple Oatmeal Breakfast Risotto, original recipe from My KitchenCafe Blog

1/2 cup steel-ground oatmeal (I used PC Blue Menu Steel Cut Oats)
1 cup Arborio rice
1 cup 2% evaporated milk
4 ½  cups water
1 vanilla bean**, scraped (if you don’t have a vanilla bean, substitute 2 tsp vanilla extract) **see notes below
1/2 cup real maple syrup (or brown sugar)
Pinch of  salt
Berries of choice to top it off (we have used strawberries both times, as that is what i had in the fridge, but you could substitute any kind of fresh or frozen berry, just thaw the frozen ones first)

Place all ingredients except for the berries into the rice cooker:
steel cut oats

Arborio Rice
2% evaporated milk

Yummy maple syrup

vanilla bean

Then the water and salt (sorry, no pictures here!)
Turn on  to cook as per your rice cooker instructions. 

When it finishes the cooking cycle, stir well

Top with berries and milk if so desired,  and enjoy.



**To use a vanilla bean: The fresher the bean the better, mine was getting a wee bit dried out, but still useable. Using a sharp paring type knife, slit the bean from one end to the other

Scrape out the seeds from the pod.

Use seeds in desired recipe.

Once scraped, I put the beans into a jar with some white sugar, shake it around, and let sit. The beans infuse a wonderful vanilla flavour into your sugar. You can then use it in anything that you would use regular sugar for.
E-zine has a good article on using vanilla beans here.



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