Eat Your Heart Out ! ... From beautiful rustic jars

Today has been a day full of eating great food! However I have not been cooking all day long! How is that possible you say ??  I used some amazingly simple recipes that involved a large amount of flavour for a small amount of effort!


I started with Breakfast:

Baked beans with eggs poached into it, topped with ricotta and parsley. Maple bacon and of course some carbs to fill us up!

Baked beans with eggs poached into it:

This is such a simple yet tasty dish. Simple empty a can of baked beans into an oiled pan. make small wells in the baked beans and crack a few eggs into it. Plop a few lumps of ricotta/ feta/ mozzarella whatever you have and salt , pepper and parsley to taste! That is the prep done!
Now place the pan on the stove and let it bubble for around 10-15 minutes or until the egg only jiggles slightly when you shake the pan.. this will ensure a heavenly runny yolk.

The Maple Bacon:

There are two ways to do this, the slow easy way is to place a few rashers or streaky bacon on a lined baking tray, drizzle Maple all over it and place into an oven preheated to 180 degrees and bake for 15-25 minutes depends on the degree of crispiness you like.

The fast way of making maple bacon is to cook the bacon in a frying pan till your desired crispiness (around 5 minutes for me on med-high heat) and then at the last minute drizzle it generously with maple, cover it and take it off the heat letting it sit for a while for the maple to caramelize.

* Note: REAL maple syrup is a must! Imitation maple taste horrible! Trust me... I've tried.

Now that you have your breakfast , you'll have plenty of energy to read on :)

Over the week I ordered some beautiful rustic jars from Peter of Kensington and my idea for them were to house my flour, sugars and sprinkles; But also I wanted them as containers for my food on picnics

Here are two ways I will be utilizing my jars :

Le Parfait Jars from Peter of Kensington 500 ml

My shaved fruit salad. This is an elegant way of serving fruit salad, this way when you grab a mouthful you get a shaving of multiple fruits at the one time.

I have in this jar, rockmelon, pear and apple shaved, peeled fresh lychees and halved cherries. The shaved fruits soaked in the flavour of the lychees and it was delicious !


Next I made a blueberry and plum crumble that took me less than 10 minutes!

Le parfait jar 250 ml

The sexy crumble

My quick and easy Blueberry and Plum Crumble

The Berry Mixture:

2 Tablespoons of frozen blueberries
1 Red Plum sliced into 8 pieces
1 1/2 Tablespoon of caster sugar
1 strip of lemon rind

Combine all the ingredients and microwave for 1 min and 30 seconds
Mix  and remove the lemon rind, also pour away some of the liquid (about half) .We are using frozen blueberries so there is more liquid than we need.
Spoon into the jar and set aside.

The Crumble:

2 Table spoons of desiccated coconut
2 Table spoons of sliced almonds
1 Table spoon of cold butter
1 Teaspoon of brown sugar
1 1/2 Teaspoon of Caster sugar
1 Table spoon of SF Flour
1 Teaspoon of Plain Flour
A drizzle of honey

Combine all the ingredients using your hands
Spread the mixture out on a baking tray making sure there are some big and small chunks
Bake in a 180 degree preheated oven for 5-6 minutes until slightly golden
Let it cool slightly until it is crisp and crunchy

Spoon over the berry mixture in the jar, pop on lid and it is ready!

This is perfect for a warm sunny day on a picnic and will impress your friends and loved ones when you pull it out of the picnic basket. They will love the crispy sweet crumble onop that compliments the slightly tart juicy berry mixture on the bottom.



Oh it also makes a great gift....

Enjoy!


xx Mel