Bircher Muesli aka Improved Overnight Oats

When I was in Australia in 2006, I kept running into a curious breakfast offering known as 'bircher muesli'.  I couldn't quite figure out what was going on - it was a delicious cold oatmeal dish with a nice blend of textures, from the slightly chewy oats and fruit to the crunchy nuts.  Garnished with fresh fruit, this became one of my favorites, and I brought the concept home.  It turned out that the secret was to not cook the oats, but instead to soak them overnight in the fridge with a mixture of other healthy breakfast items and fluids.  The oats absorb the liquid and become not only edible, but delicious and probably slightly more healthy than the cooked variant, although I would question their nutrient availability.

The other day I was talking about this dish with a food marketing friend, and she told me that the internet was currently flooded with prissy fitness instructors' recipes for "overnight oats".  Apparently a variation of this dish has caught on among American health-starved food fad folks, and they have stripped out some of the better elements and loaded it up with only the healthiest of liquids and additives.  I believe that the Australian version is far superior, as they like to add things like flavor and texture to their dish, and since they are very much a muesli and porridge culture, I trust their judgment.  So before overnight oats goes the way of the jello mold, let me see if I can reclaim the Australian flag here and rescue this dish from the fad category.


Bircher Muesli
By Flip Shelton (an actual Australian!)

"Tailor your flavours using any combination of dried and fresh fruit and nuts. If you don't like yoghurt, add more mashed banana and fruit juice. Double the recipe to make enough for several days' breakfasts - it tastes even better after a little time in the fridge." - Flip, proving that this is definitely not from America

Serves 1-2

• 1 cup rolled oats
• ½ cup apple juice (or freshly squeezed orange juice)
• ½ cup yogurt
• 1/8 cup currants, or golden raisins
• 1/8 cup slivered almonds
• a sprinkling of ground nutmeg
• a sprinkling of ground cinnamon
• ½ Granny Smith apple, grated (skin on), to serve
• ½ banana, sliced or mashed, to serve
• seasonal berries and mint sprigs, to serve

Combine the rolled oats, apple juice, yoghurt, currants, almonds, nutmeg and cinnamon in a large bowl and stir together. Chill overnight (or for at least two hours).

Te serve, stir in the grated apple and banana, put into a bowl and garnish with seasonal berries and mint sprigs.

I like the color contrast of the oats, the banana, and the green grated apple, so I don't stir to incorporate.

Now, the most important part - variations.  Here are a list of different things to add to this that I have come across, either from the Aussies or from the crazy health-conscious Americans.  See if you can guess who provided what ideas:

• Add passionfruit pulp
• Use dried cranberries instead of golden raisins
• Add dried apricots or dried pears
• Use pumpkin seeds instead of almonds
• Replace apple juice with almond milk
• Add chia seeds
• Replace apple juice with milk, add cocoa powder
• Add peanut butter or PB2
• Add maple syrup and blueberries

I also like the idea of serving this in a mason jar.  I'm going to try that and post more pictures soon.

Cranberry Oatmeal Pancakes

Let me temper this recipe with a caveat - I'm not a huge fan of pancakes.  I feel like people who love pancakes are basically ready to stab their own mother for just one more hit of maple syrup-soaked cake goodness, and somehow they can devour a whole plate of these things without batting an eye.  I, on the other hand, usually get through about 3 bites of pancake before I'm ready to walk away in need of something with a bit more flavor.  Unless they're really good, which they most often are not, pancakes are just kind of vanilla.

In stark contrast to your average pancake recipe, I found a very bizarre-sounding recipe in a Vitamix blender cookbook, of all places.  It called for different flours, the use of oats, seeds, and berries, and generally all healthy stuff.  And since I don't think many of you have a Vitamix, or pore over the recipe book it came with if you do, I'm going to repost it here, with slight variations (I don't have a Vitamix either, is the weird part).  I thought this was really good, had an interesting consistency, and was rather healthy by pancake standards.  Also, with minimal tweaking I believe this is a gluten-free dish, but I can't back that up. 

These pancakes have all kinds of surprises inside - seeds, oats, and cranberries.  It's like a piñata for your mouth

Cranberry Oatmeal Pancakes
From: Vitamix blender cookbook

Yield: 10-12 pancakes
Total Time: 25 Minutes

• 1.5 cups milk, soy milk, rice milk, or almond milk (I used rice milk)
• 1 large egg
• 2 tbsp light olive oil or vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup (60 g) uncooked, rolled oats
• 1.25 cups (150 g) whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup (26 g) flax seed meal
• 1/4 cup (30 g) dried cranberries
• 2 tablespoons (15 g) unsalted sunflower seeds

Not your average pancakes!  This is kind of the royal family of pancake ingredients, including flax meal, a very  interesting nutty product made from ground whole flax seeds

Place milk, egg, oil and ¼ cup (20 g) rolled oats (NOT ALL OF THEM!!!) into a blender or food processor bowl.  Blend / chop / whatever you've got on medium speed for about 20 seconds to incorporate.

I didn't know if my food processor would properly pulverize the oats, but there was so little compared to the amount of liquid that this was no problem

In a large bowl, combine the remaining oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and flax meal, stirring to combine.

Crazy pancakes - when a big bowl of white flour just won't do.  Clockwise from top: salt, baking powder, oats, flax meal, whole wheat flour

Add the wet to the dry.  The order matters!

Pour wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix gently by hand to combine.  Stir in the dried cranberries and sunflower seeds.  Allow mixture to set for 10 minutes before cooking.

Fold in the seeds and berries, and let this sit for a few minutes.  You want the double acting baking powder to act once, creating air bubbles that will give you a nice fluffy product before cooking.  The second 'act' of the baking powder happens when you heat it.

I found that this batter was a bit thick, so you can dilute with a bit more milk if you like thinner pancakes.  Cook in melted butter on a skillet, ideally one of the electric variety, until bubbles around the edges start to set.  Flip and cook for another couple of minutes.

Look for the bubbles around the edges to set up

To serve, I would use a berry-based syrup such as boysenberry or blueberry.  Or if you really want to drive home that you're eating something different, use cranberry sauce!

Crunchy, nutty cranberry oatmeal pancakes.  Treat your body to a healthy breakfast.

Steel-cut Oat Risotto with Chicken Peppers and Manchego

Have you had steel-cut oats yet?  If not, has someone been bugging you about it?  You should listen to that person, because they're awesome, and people say they're more healthy due to the minimal processing.  Steel-cut oats are more chewy than regular oatmeal, as they are more coarsely cut and served.  They therefore require extra cooking time, much more like a rice or barley.  So naturally, someone thought to use steel-cut oats to replace arborio or carnaroli rice in risotto, with amazing results.

Did you know that replacing you just 3 cups of gravy per day with steel-cut oats will lower your cholesterol?

For the record, a quick search online didn't conclusively prove that there are any nutritional differences between rolled oats and steel-cut oats, as both glycemic index and in nutritional value are almost identical, and I haven't seen anything on the degradation of vitamins caused by steaming and toasting the grains first.  And neither can I find any results showing that steel-cut oats are better for you than arborio rice, with the exception of 4x the dietary fiber and slightly fewer carbs per serving (27 g compared to 36 g in a 1/4 cup).  But let's go back to pretend-land where the health food industry is always right, and where we think that steel-cut oats are another of nature's new panaceas, and move on with this awesome recipe.

I followed this recipe to the letter, with the only exception of using breast meat chicken instead of dark, because that's what I had.  And I went with a 9 month aged Manchego cheese.  Manchego is a deliciously tart sheep's milk cheese with little holes in it, aged similarly to a Parmesan but not nearly as long.  The younger ones are more soft, so I went with a middle of the road aging to cut down on costs.  I think I struck the right balance.

A nice piece of 9 Manchego cheese, about to meet a painful end

Now, we're actually going to do some cooking here - this is risotto, not some slow cooker, easy-bake oven recipe where you barely do anything.  Risotto's not one of those "yes Mr. Telemarketer, I do have a few minutes to talk about my current long distance plan" kind of dishes - you need to be attentive.  In risotto, you add broth a little bit at a time while stirring constantly, helping loosen and dissolve the starches on the surface of the grains into a rich, velvety sauce.  It's the exact opposite of pasta, where you leave the stuff alone while boiling so you don't accidentally knock all of the starch into the boiling water and end up with something the consistency of wadded Wonder Bread afterwards.  Also, you're controlling the cooking amount by adding broth gradually, so you don't end up with an overly runny or dry risotto at the end.  Here, look at this:

This is a close-up wheat starch molecules from here, stained with iodine so you can see it better.  Picture these cells packed all around things like oats and rice, and essentially forming the entirety of pasta.  When exposed to water, these cells will swell and burst.  And when that happens, smaller particles in the starch (amylose) want to get out, party, and let it all hang out.

So now you've got these amylose bits swimming around, and they're long chains that unravel and get all caught up on each other, like a bunch of christmas light strands in a box despite your best efforts to the contrary.  They form a kind of web that makes for a rich, creamy texture that's, well, it's just great.  So do stir your risotto, and don't stir your pasta.  Shamelessly reproduced from here, by the way.

Steel-Cut Oat Risotto with Chicken, Red Peppers, and Manchego

Cooking Light, March 2005

Yield:  4 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

• 2 (14-ounce) cans fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 3/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 1 large red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 1/4 cups steel-cut oats
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 cup chopped cooked dark meat chicken
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded Manchego cheese
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Gather and prepare all of your ingredients.  Bring broth to a simmer in a medium saucepan (do not boil). Keep warm.

The setup.

Here's what I took 'finely chopped' to mean.  Is that diced?  Maybe, but at least its uniform.

Heat oil in a medium sauté pan over medium heat.  Add the onion and bell pepper, and sauté for 5 minutes (don't brown).  Add the oats and cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly.  The goal is to coat the oats in the fat in the pan, and get them toasted slightly.  

Saute vegetables over medium heat, with the heated broth ready and in arm's reach

Toss the grains in the oil before deglazing.  Without supervision, this will burn like a marshmallow over an open fire.

Now to deglaze.  Stir in the white wine and cook for 2 minutes or until nearly absorbed, stirring constantly.  For me, this took about 20 seconds.

Look closely at what's going on here.  That liquid is boiling aggressively, yanking all of the little flavor bits off the pan while you stir.  And as the liquid evaporates, its flavor becomes more concentrated too.  This is deglazing.

Add the broth, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring until each portion of broth is absorbed before adding the next (about 20 minutes in total).  Keep stirring!  Towards the end this may stick, so be careful.

Here's what my risotto looked like when I felt it was done

How do you know when it's done?  Well, a little trick I learned in cooking class was this - taste your food!  Get a spoon, and put some in your mouth.  Does it feel like eating pebbles?  If not, then you might be onto something.  When you feel like it's done, turn off the heat and pull the pan to another burner.  Stir in the chicken, cheese, rosemary, and salt, and serve immediately.

Stir in the cheese, chicken, and rosemary off the heat

Serve with a nice piece of bread and a refreshing beverage

Granola Bars

Ah, granola.  The rallying cry of the crunchy hippie; the perfect backpacking food; that which is somewhere between breakfast and dessert.  Yes, granola, you are truly an amazing thing.  And I have figured out your secrets.

It turns out granola bars are surprisingly easy to make, and also fun to customize.  In a nutshell, granola is typically a mixture of oats, nuts, dried fruit, and a binding agent, either shoved into bar form or allowed to form clusters, like peanut brittle.  I prefer bars, which seem easier to hold while moving.

My 'recipe' for granola bars is stolen from Alton Brown, but it has been modified more times than I care to count.  Like a good chili, granola is an olio of whatever grains and fruits I have on hand; tonight's version brings you a walnut strawberry granola, although I have also done a coconut, chocolate, berry granola.  I will keep the recipe generic enough that you can adapt, but specific enough that it still makes sense.

You will notice in my process that I use parchment paper to line my baking sheet.  What is parchment paper, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you.  Parchment paper is paper that has been infused with silicone, which is exactly what they make oven-safe, nonstick utensils and some bakeware out of.  So it's paper that can go in the oven, is nonstick, and cleans up like aluminum foil but with none of the Alzheimer's threat.  Hooray!

This recipe can be done using measuring spoons and cups, but it is greatly simplified if you have a digital scale.  That way, you can keep adding ingredients to your grain sheet and your liquid pot very quickly, without fiddling with implements.  I'd say you cut about 10 out of 15 minutes of hands-on labor out by using a scale.

This is my strawberry chocolate walnut granola bar.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Granola Bars

• 8 ounces old-fashioned rolled oats, appx 2 cups
• 1.5 ounces raw sunflower seeds, appx 1/2 cup
• 3 ounces sliced almonds, appx 1 cup
• 1.5 ounces wheat germ (do not toast), appx 1/2 cup
• 6 ounces honey, appx 1/2 cup
• 1.75 ounces dark brown sugar, appx 1/4 cup packed
• 1 ounce unsalted butter (2 tbsp)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract - the real stuff, avoid imitation if you can
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 6.5 ounces total chopped fruit and chocolate (preferably more fruit than chocolate)
• Parchment paper

Line a 9 by 13 inch glass baking dish with parchment paper and set aside.  Preheat over to 350 degrees F.

Parchment paper in a baking sheet.  I cut the edges so I can get a good square shape

Combine roughly 12 ounces of oats, seeds, and nuts on a half-sheet pan and spread out evenly.  Try to use roughly 8 ounces of oats, 4 ounces max of nuts, and 2-4 ounces of seeds, such as pumpkin or sunflower.  If using wheat germ, do not include these yet (they will burn).  Place sheet pan in the oven and toast for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

The full pan of grains.  I used walnuts instead of sunflower seeds, just because

In the meantime, combine the honey, brown sugar, butter, extract and salt in a medium saucepan and place over medium heat.  The salt actually helps temper the sweetness of the rest of this mixture, bringing up the perceived balance in the flavors.  Cook until the brown sugar has completely dissolved, and be careful not to burn yourself with the resulting napalm-like solution.

Mmm, sugary goodness

The toasted grains, nuts, and seeds

Once the oat mixture is done, remove it from the oven and reduce the heat to 300 degrees F.  If using chocolate chips, allow the oat mixture to cool slightly.  If not, immediately add the oat mixture to the liquid mixture, add the dried fruit and wheat germ, and stir to combine.

Stir the liquid with the grains, fruit, and possible chocolate chips.  If using chocolate, act quickly or you will have a melted mess on your hands, which is tasty but not as attractive

Use wax paper and press down as hard as you can to compress the mixture into a thin sheet

Turn mixture out into the prepared baking dish and press down, evenly distributing the mixture in the dish and place in the oven to bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven, scoring bars to make slicing easier but not cutting all the way through, and allow to cool completely.  Cut into squares and store in an airtight container for up to a week.

A full sheet of granola bars before slicing.  I find that a pizza slicer works well while the bars are mostly but not fully cooled