Milk or Yoghurt? Homemade granola is grand either way

People are particular about what they'll eat in the morning. I find you can separate cereal eaters with the eponymous question - do you top it with milk or yoghurt? In our house, "Daddy cereal" is simply muesli splashed with milk. Undoubtedly nourishing, but maybe a little bit soggy. Conversely, "Mummy cereal" goes to great lengths to avoid water logging - crunchy, toasted cereal, topped with yoghurt. She fastidiously removes the raisins, leaving a little pile of shrivelled treats for a lucky passer-by.

I'm a fan of fruit for breakfast - I feel cheated if I don't get at least two of my five-a-day. I don't really have a problem with soggy oats, and indeed a little water logging does currants a world of good, but I find a fruit salad floating in milk a bit unappealing. It's yoghurt all the way for me - and muesli just doesn't work with yoghurt. Shop-bought toasted cereal (call it granola, if you will, though I'm doing my best to avoid it) is expensive and full of sugar. So it's good to know that you can make your own for a fraction of the cost - both monetary and calorific.

Fruit - fresh, cooked, tinned or otherwise - should be the star of the show. Sprinkle your cereal over a glorious heap of summer berries, adorn it with silky slices of banana or pile it atop a steaming bowl of stewed apple. Add a luscious dollop of natural yoghurt - low fat if you're feeling virtuous or decadent Greek-style if it's going to be a hard day. And if you are a milk person and you like it soggy, add other liquid too, depending on your fruit - milk works with banana, but dairy isn't the only way - apple juice is divine with strawberries.

Serve with plenty of fruit and natural yoghurt. I'm also eating "hedgerow pulp", left over from jelly-making last year.

Home-made toasted muesli

Though I usually advocate sensible modern measures, cups are rather convenient here, and precise measurement is not required. I don't add dried fruit to mine, but you could add some in after cooking. Makes 8-10 servings. 

4 cups cereal - my favourite breakdown is as follows, but you could use any combination:
2 ¹/₂ cups rolled oats
¹/₂ cup bran flakes
¹/₂ cup rolled rye flakes
¹/₂ cup rolled spelt flakes

¹/₄ cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp runny honey
1 tbsp golden syrup

¹/₃ cup mixed seeds - I use golden linseeds, sunflower, pumpkin and pine nuts
handful mixed nuts, roughly chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 180°. Find a large baking tray and cover with a sheet of greaseproof paper. Put all the cereals into a bowl with the oil, honey and syrup. Roll up your sleeves. With your hands, combine the ingredients, scrunching and squeezing to encourage it into small clumps.
2. Tip onto the prepared baking tray and spread into an even layer. Bake in the hot oven for 10 minutes. It should be starting to brown at the edges. Take it out, sprinkle over the nuts and seeds, and redistribute with a spatula.
3. Bake for another 5-10 minutes to a lovely golden brown colour. Leave to cool and develop some crunch before tipping or spooning into an airtight container. It will keep for a week or so, though it never lasts that long in our house!

Notes: Experiment with the sugars - sometimes I use agave syrup if I've run out of honey or golden syrup; I have also used jam (though with rather unconvincing results, requires more experimentation!). You can save the sheet of greaseproof paper for re-use next time. Mixed nuts and seeds are very good value at Lidl; cereals other than oats are hard to find in the supermarket but easily available from health food shops.

Welcome to My Kitchen - A Note on Degorging

Who salts aubergines?

Sometimes I do. It's one of those things that you pick up from some reputable but forgettable source - and carry on doing because it seems like 'the right way'. I'm not sure where I came across this advice, but for a long time I diligently did it, just because.

"Degorging" is in fact meant to extract the bitter juices from the fruit. I've never tasted a bitter aubergine in my life, and that's because bitterness has been bred out of modern varieties available in the UK. It also stops them soaking up excess oil when you cook them. Why would you want to do that? They are so much more delicious when succulent with oil and juices, when they melt on the tongue like butter. I have come to this conclusion via a combination sheer laziness and casual observation. So my informed answer is: 'usually I don't bother'.

Everybody has to eat, and most people have to cook. Your repertoire of dishes, your unique culinary personality, is of course influenced by taste, but also by experience - what you ate as a child, what you learned to prepare as a sticky-fingered toddler or ravenous adolescent, what somebody kind cooked you when you felt ill, the people you've shared kitchens with, places you've visited, restaurants you've been to on dates and for birthdays, which shops you live near, the friendliness of the soil in your garden - the list is infinite. What do you cook when you're tired and hungry and wish to bumble around the kitchen with your eyes half shut? For me it's creamy macaroni cheese with leeks and bacon and the tang of mustard and really mature cheddar. Preparing and eating this dish is for me the kitchen equivalent (and is indeed usually accompanied by) donning pyjamas and slippers at the end of a hard day. Your dish might be different, but the effect the same.

And so to the motivation for this blog. Eating is one of the greatest joys in life! Ergo, improving your cooking skills will make you happier! Kitchen rituals and heritage should be cherished - comforting and nourishing as they are. They are at their finest when shared and passed on. But there's also value in rejecting dogma, finding new ways, expanding your repertoire. Explore new ingredients, try new recipes. Cultivate your own kitchen lore. Taste memory is extraordinarily powerful. Fuel your appetite for new experiences - ask yourself: "what food will take me back to now?"