decadent matcha tea and coconut milk porridge
Coconut milk is something I always seem to have leftover after making a curry or some Souteast-Asian recipe. Mostly I save it by putting it into a container and freeze it. In smaller quantities I sometimes drink the leftover straight from the tin...as you do. Food saving and leftover cooking has to be simple for me. I don’t want another trip to the shops for buying ingredients I don’t have at home, just so I can use over that bit of whatever I want to use before it goes off. Why make it complicated? It’s got to be easy peasy.
Easy Peasy is also the title of the cookbook of food photographer Joerg Lehmann and his lovely wife Risa Nagahama. I was introduced to them a few months ago and just fell in love with their wonderful cookbook and the simplicity and elegance of their recipes. All the recipes in that cookbook (published by Callwey Verlag, currently only available in German) use between 2 to 8 ingredients that are mostly easy to obtain (if you don’t have them in your larder already) and do without longwinded methods.
There is one recipe I have cooked several times already. It is so satisfying, a brilliant start into the day and it goes by the wonderful name of Queen of Japan. It's a porridge using rice-coconut drink, matcha green tea, pistacchios and maple syrup. When I shopped for a curry recipe the other day I knew I will have some coconut milk leftover. I decided I will simply adapt the Queen of Japan replacing rice-coconut drink with the leftover coconut milk. Sure it will make the whole recipe a lot richer, but hey: a big guy like me needs a decent breakfast. I have acutally doubled the amounts of the original recipe. Only 50 gram of oats would make me feel depleted and starving the entire morning. I had 300 ml coconut milk leftover and added 50 ml water, but feel free to experiment. If it's too rich for you, you could dilute the coconut milk with water and have another Queen of Japan the following day. You will need about 350 ml (12 fl. oz) of liquid for 100 g (3.5 oz) of porridge oats. I have to add that using coconut milk instead of rice-coconut drink dulls the hue of the original recipe. The matcha appears only as a pale green.
Decadent matcha tea and coconut milk porridge
100 g (3.5 oz) porridge oats
300 ml (10 fl. oz) coconut milk + 50 ml (1.5 fl. oz) water
20 g (1 oz) of roasted unsalted pistacchios
2 tablespoons of maple syrup or agava nectar
2 teaspoons matcha tea powder
Add the oats, coconut milk and water to a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring in between. Once the mixture comes to a boil remove from the heat, cover and let rest for about 5 minutes. Coarsely chop the pistacchios. Add the matcha tea powder to the porridge and stir well until the porridge has an elegant green hue. Serve in a bowl with the maple syrup drizzled on top and sprinkle with the chopped pistacchios.
