Apple Delight for Weekend Breakfast

          One of the things I love to do in the kitchen is to use different sources and recipes in order to create a new dish. It’s quite exciting for me to imagine how the flavours will work together and, if all the elements on the plate compliment each other, the final result can become a real hit.

            For quite a long time I felt like trying to combine three different dishes that have the same core ingredient – apple – in order to create a bright and flavourful, fiber-rich meal for breakfast. One of the elements was a toast (something that I actually make quite often in the mornings), another one was a soufflé - omelette (I cooked it once and was impressed by its subtle taste and delicate texture), and the third one was a mousselin (I wanted to try the dish since I saw the recipe in my “Larousse Gastonomique” dictionary). The first two elements seemed to be more or less traditional options for breakfast while the third one was definitely more of a dessert type, so I figured out that I should better make the whole dish on a Saturday or a Sunday, when the first meal of the day can be of a brunch type and you can afford having something really sweet and fancy.  Besides, I wouldn’t have managed to cook all the three parts on a busy morning in the middle of the week, so I had to wait for a weekend anyway.

            Finally, the right day arrived. It was a Sunday morning and, as I woke up pretty early, I realized that I have enough time to prepare the trio of apple dishes. One and a half hours later our house was filled with a delightful aroma of orange and cinnamon. What a great way to say “Good morning!”

Ingredients:

Apple mousseline (recipe adapted from “Larousse Gastonomique”)

3 medium dessert apples, peeled and cored

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

100 ml orange juice

1 egg

1 egg yolk

40 ml heavy cream

1 tsp crushed walnuts

2 walnut halves

1 tsp Cointreau

Apple and ricotta toast (recipe adapted from the original Sanjeev Kapoor’s one)

2 slices of bread, crust removed

½  Granny Smith apple, peeled and cored

100 ml orange juice

1 tsp orange zest

¼ cup ricotta

2 tsp crushed cashew

½ tsp cinnamon powder

Soufflé – omelette with apple and cream cheese (recipe adapted from “The recipe collection” magazine)

2 eggs, separated

1 tbsp coriander, chopped

1 tbsp butter

25 gm Maasdam cheese, grated

½  Granny Smith apple, peeled and cored

50 gm cream cheese, room temperature

Method:

1. For the apple mousseline, preheat the oven to 180C. Grease two 1-cup capacity round moulds. Dice 2 ½ of your apples and slice the remaining half. Heat butter in a pan, add vanilla sugar and diced apples and stew them until soft. Allow to cool slightly. Poach slices of apple in orange juice until just soft and arrange them at the bottom of prepared moulds. Blend stewed apples with cream, egg and yolk, mix in crushed walnuts and divide the mixture between the moulds. Put into the oven and bake for 35 – 40 minutes.
2. For the apple toast, put the slices of bread in the oven (next to your moulds) for 10 minutes, turning them once during cooking time. Bring the liquid in which you poached your apples for the mousseline to a simmer, together with the remaining orange juice. Stir in the orange zest and cinnamon. Cut the half of your Granny Smith apple into slices and poach them in the mixture until soft. Combine ricotta with crushed cashew nuts, spread the mixture over the toasted bread slices and arrange the poached slices of apple on top. Return to the oven for 5 more minutes.
3. For soufflé – omelette, beat egg yolks till light and pale, stir in the coriander. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites till stiff picks, and fold them gently into the yolks. Heat butter in a pan over medium heat, spread the egg mixture, sprinkle with Maasdam, reduce heat to low and cook, covered, for a few minutes. Flip your omelette and cook on the other side for 1 more minute. For the filling, grate the half of your Granny Smith apple and mix it with cream cheese. Arrange it over your cooked omelette, roll it and cut into pieces.
4. To serve, run a sharp knife around the edges of the mouselline and flip it onto the plate; put a walnut half on top. Place a toast and a piece of a soufflé-omelette on the side. Reduce the poaching liquid over high heat, stir in Cointreau and pour the sauce around the mousseline.

 

Notes:

1. The original recipe for the mousseline didn’t call for blending the diced apples. Despite the fact that I woke up early, I was concerned that the dish won’t be cooked in time, so I decided to speed up the process. If you want, make compote with stewed apples till it’s easy to mash them with a fork, then mix with eggs and cream. I guess, it will change the final texture, although I was pretty happy with mine.
2. If you can’t get Maasdam cheese, substitute it with Edam  which also has a sweet and fruity flavour.