Top 5 Sunday Brunch Recipes
YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM
The Bhakti Basics Big 5 Brunches
Sunday’s are sacred. Time to spend time luxuriating in cooking, and savoring delicious food. Aussie’s love brunch, it’s the perfect meal to tide us over until the barbeque!
1 —
Keto Pancakes
I LOVE pancakes, like a LOT! One of my earliest childhood memories is of being on holidays with my father at the beachhouse and (taking advantage of my mother not being there to tell me no) eating so many of them I was physically sick. They were the first thing I ever learnt to cook, as a kid my best friend and I would add blue or green food die to creep out her siblings (and have more for ourselves!).
In fact pancakes have such a special place in my heart that they were the very first dish I cooked in the kitchen of my first home I bought. Special or what! After the realization that eating dairy and grain free was a big help in managing my endometriosis symptoms I knew I had to find a way to make my beloved pancakes with totally new ingredients (if anyone wants the original recipe DM me, I know it off by heart but it's too naughty to publish here lol). It took me a good few years to get them right, and also keep them simple and quick.
If you want them super light and fluffy you can discard the yolk, whip the whites until they form peaks and then fold them in with all the other ingredients at the last minute. It's a bit more of a faff and you're missing out on precious nutrients from the yolk, but they are lighter than air and absolutely delicious!
2 —
Smashed Avo
Australia has a very well established café culture, and I think it's safe to say that the influx of Aussie baristas and brunch spots popping up in the UK has attributed to the rise of "Smashed Avo and a poached egg" on our social feeds.
We also have a wonderful melting pot of cultures that have led to a combination of Turkish, Lebanese, Italian and English "Sunday Brunches" that I guess would have once been described as fusion but that are now uniquely Aussie. If you've ever been to Grainger’s you'll know exactly what I mean, eggs any style with a lot of flatbread, sumac, dukkha, tapenade, sun blush tomatoes and basil, YUM! This version of a classic is a nod to my roots, perfect with a mimosa or two!
3 —
Grain Free Granola
When I began to eliminate grains from my diet that also meant my beloved home made granola needed an overhaul. I experimented with simply subbing oats with Quinoa or teff flakes but couldn't get the same delicious clumping, and it took a while to get the right temperatures throughout.
A lot of recipes call for "a mixture of nuts" but I'd always end up picking the pecans out and having a handful of them (and any granola stuck to it) as a snack on the go, so now I make sure it's always the right ration of pecans and walnuts to seeds. I batch cook this in large amounts as it keeps amazingly well in the freezer, and its great for travelling to remote locations/camping so you know you'll have something delicious and nutritious even if the only food available is chip butty’s or scones!
This granola is delicious on top of a yogurt of your choice, add some chocolate nut butter if you're feeling really decedent, or if you're after a more wholesome breakfast served with some orange juice over it is ridiculously tasty. I actually discovered that on some trip or another when there was no dairy free alternative and I thought, why not try Tropicana? A nutritionist friend of mine saw me doing it once on a retreat and said she calls that a "smoothie bowl" where you add all the ingredients you'd otherwise blend, so there you go, you heard it here first...
4 —
Green Eggs
This is a take on one of my all-time favorite Aussie Brunches. The combination of eggs with salty feta, robust garlicy greens and fresh basil pesto is a staple in our house and my boyfriend's absolute favorite dish I cook. It's so simple and yet yields a hell of a punchy flavor combo.
Can be served with baby new potatoes if you need to get more carbs in, and if you're inclined to add meat Dr Seuss suggests adding ham, I guess that could work... Nice on a boat or in a moat!
5 —
Loaded Porridge
Another retreat must have - if you've spent all morning doing yoga nothing quite nourishes and revitalizes like a big bowl of porridge with generous helpings of nuts, seeds and fruit.
Stewed apple and pears are the most delicious autumnal treats but you can use the summer berry topping from the pancake recipe, bananas, or anything else that takes your fancy. My favorite pseudo-grain to use is amaranth, but you can use oats, teff and quinoa flakes which are great grain free substitutes are readily available from any health food store.