Eastern Infused Porridge - Recipe by Rebecca Beesley

This is The Brilliant Chef's mum here. After an amazing couple of years, Daniel seems to want a break from cooking as he hasn't really wanted to get in the kitchen at all so far this year. 

Rather than leaving his blog laying dormant, I've been toying with the idea of it becoming our family's main 'foodie' blog as we have so many food adventures and yet our main blog, The Beesley Buzz covers a whole range of topics and not just food. 

So I thought I'd add a recipe on here and see how I feel about it and more importantly how Daniel feels about it. 

In the cold winter months porridge makes the perfect breakfast option. And I wanted to give porridge a twist with some of the persian cookery flavours that I love so much. 

This beautiful light saffron-yellow porridge is infused with Eastern spices to give it an aromatic flavour – It is a sweet porridge (not savoury) and has an indulgent feel to it, yet is healthy and delicious. I like to think of it as healthy enough for breakfast, yet tasty enough for dessert!

Ingredients:

40g Porridge Oats
300ml whole milk
Pinch saffron
A quarter tsp rosewater
1 whole star anise
Pinch ground cardamom
1 heaped tsp flaked almonds
1 heaped tsp pistachio slivers
Drizzle of honey
Rose petals to garnish

Method:

1. Place the milk in the pan on a low heat on the hob and add a pinch of saffron (you really do only need the tiniest pinch), the star anise, the rosewater and ground cardamom. Leave to infuse for around 3-4 minutes.

2. Remove the star anise and then use your Eastern infused milk to make your porridge in your usual way (I pop mine in the microwave in a large bowl for 4 minutes)

3. Serve into a bowl and sprinkle the flaked almonds, rose petals and pistachio slivers on top. Add a drizzle of honey. Be generous with the almonds and pistachios as it adds a beautiful crunch.

Variations to this would be to make the recipe using pudding rice to make a rice pudding using all these flavours. The rice would need longer to cook than porridge though. 

I think ground rice would also work well using the amounts and cooking method as described on a packet of ground rice. i.e. you only need a small amount of ground rice with plenty of milk.