Foodie Fridays: Breakfast Brulee

I had an amazing breakfast dish on Sunday. So simple one could easily whip up servings for 10 in a half hour, and yet so flexibly elegant it would not be out of place at a semi-formal brunch or for a cold Saturday morning with the significant other.

Spokane has an extremely small, but deviously devoted foodie community and with no Trader Joe’s in sight (Seriously, the closest is four hours away in Seattle. Don’t even. I know. Sigh.) the gastronomic faithful turn to Huckleberry’s* Natural Market. The store is very Whole Foods-ish, but it’s actually owned by the smaller more conventional supermarket chain Rosauers (pronounced rose-ours’ – not like dinosaurs) and it has an inexpensive, yet delicious cafe which makes this mystery breakfast dish. Continued …

The 9th Street Bistro makes something called “Brulee” (noticeably sans accent) which basically amounts to glorified oatmeal, but the sum of the parts is oh-so-much better than oatmeal:

Brulee – $4.99
Rolled oats, dried apples, apricots, figs, and walnuts, and a caramelized sugar top. Served with Maple syrup and cream.

While this doesn’t exactly need a recipe, there are a lot of things a cook can tinker with; the fresh-to-dried fruit ratio, the types of fruit, the types of nuts, the cut of the oatmeal, etc. The key to this dish was that the oatmeal was actually rather firm and not overcooked – al dente. The fruit and nuts were mixed-in, sugar was sprinkled on top and quickly bruleed leaving the dish a very satisfying crunchy contrast. Another nice touch was the small glass that was half maple syrup and half milk (with the milk floated on top of the syrup). Unfortunately no cameras were present and I was too hungry to wait, so no pictures of the dish survive.

*”Huckleberry’s” is not a reference to the famous Twain character, but actually to a real berry. Yes, I too thought the huckleberry was a myth – merely a blueberry by different nomenclature, but friends I can now tell you a blueberry tastes as much like a huckleberry as a strawberry tastes like a snozberry.

Er, all jokes aside, huckleberries are a regional specialty which have never been successfully domesticated and are EXTREMELY fragile. They barely make it from the woods to local markets before they collapse into a bag of juice, which explains why it costs 12 dollars for a half a pint. All this being said, they make excellent pies and jams and have a slightly medicinal woodsy flavor. Sweet but very raw.

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