Tag Archives: weekend breakfasts

Kumquat, vanilla and vodka scented marmalade

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What fun and yummy little fruits kumquats are.

For those of you unfamiliar with these petite citrusy bites, they’re all kinds of entertaining. For instance, you can pick them up and pretend to be a really big scary giant, just hanging out with an orange.  See? Fun!

Or if prancing around the kitchen shouting fee-fi-foo-fum at the cat isn’t really your idea of a good time, you could always offer them to unsuspecting boyfriends, telling him of course they can be eaten skins and all; and try to supress your giggles while his face puckers up and turns inside out. Ha!

But if winding up your loved ones ain’t your thang, I guess you could just make marmalade. It’s not quite as fun, but it’s sure as hell deeeeelicious.

I love marmalade and will always have a jar of it in the fridge for weekend toast-fests. I’ve made it plenty of times before, but never with kumquats, so I hit the interwebs for a little inspiration. I found quite a few recipes recommending adding vanilla extract, which seemed straight forward enough; but I also found several recommending using rice wine (or a mixture of rice wine and water) as the cooking liquid. Alcohol in a recipe is always guaranteed to grab my attention, I was intrigued.

For my own marmalade, I decided to use vodka. I figured the citrus flavour could handle a bit of a kick, and hell, even if it didn’t work, it would certainly make the weekend toast-fests a little more entertaining.  I got lucky, it worked; and boy does it taste good.

Kumquat, vanilla and vodka scented marmalade

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Epic (fail) eggs

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Ahh, Sunday morning.

Lovely sunny morning, maybe we could go out for breakfast? Maybe someplace by the water, that would be nice.

On second thoughts, why should I leave my nice comfortable house on a Sunday morning? That would require hair brushing and the like. Seems like effort, pants to that. I’m a food blogger, aren’t I? I can make Eggs Florentine; it can’t be that hard, surely.

Surely?

Well, it appears Eggs Florentine are a wee tiny incy bit more effort than I had initially thought. Full epic fail instructions are as follows:

  1. Clatter about in pots and pans cupboard, making as much noise as possible. Wake boyfriend and possibly neighbours; if you’re up they can’t need much more sleep.
  2. Put toast under grill and promptly forget about it.
  3. Perfectly poach the eggs (gold star!) and feel immensely proud. So proud that electric kettle is inadvertently placed on the hot stove ring (which has obviously been left on. Obviously).
  4. Vaguely smell burning toast, ignore.
  5. Melt butter for the hollandaise sauce.
  6. Realise that toast has been charred, curse loudly and put fresh bread under the grill. Resolve to pay much more attention in future.
  7. Think the burning toast smell has a funny plastic tinge to it. Must be imagining things.
  8. Scramble the eggs making the first batch of hollandaise, damn it. Stomp about a bit in frustration.
  9. Remember to check the toast (hooray!).
  10. Suddenly realise electric kettle is melting rapidly, filling kitchen with noxious kettle fumes.
  11. Curse. A lot. Very loudly. In multiple languages.
  12. Run out into garden with melted kettle and flail about for a bit, not knowing what exactly to do with it.
  13. Open all windows and doors.
  14. Snap at emerging boyfriend enquiring about burning kitchen. He should be grateful that breakfast is being made for him.
  15. Stand back, take one large (kettle filled breath) and start again

Eggs Florentine

The second time around I faired much better. However, this dish does require good timing and quick thinking and so maybe it’s not ideal for first thing on a Sunday morning.

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