First recipe - part two - muesli
"DIY muesli takes very little time, is easily as good as any you can buy and, best of all, you get to put in it what you like" Thomasina Miers
Charmaine Solomon begins her Family Recipes book with Breakfasts and Brunches. Well that's how we all start the day isn't it, so I guess it's a good place to start. It seems that she, like me, is not a breakfast person - hence the brunches - but, as she admits, having children meant that she did indeed need to 'do' breakfast. She offers a few other recipes but begins with muesli.
It's super simple, the only mildly complicated thing being that she toasts her hazelnuts (125g) in the oven (180ºC) for 10 mins, and then rubs them in a tea towel to remove the skins. These are then chopped added to the rest of the ingredients: 1 cup wheatgerm, 4 cups one-minute oats, 1 cup raw sugar, 1 cup sultanas, 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots. All of which seems a bit sweet and sugary to me. This obviously makes a big batch that you then store in your cupboard and then eat as you like - but always with milk - whether it be real milk or one of those other pseudo milks.
Muesli, or indeed any other cereal is not for me I have to say - but this is because milk makes me sick. The only way I would eat muesli is the toasted kind (more later), sprinkled over some fruit - not a bit of fruit added to muesli.
Muesli began, as you probably know, in Switzerland around 1900 when the good Dr. Bircher-Benner invented it for his sanatorium patients. Bircher muesli consists of oats soaked overnight in water, added to grated apple (very important), nuts and lemon juice - the whole mixed with cream and honey or sweetened condensed milk. It's a sloppier thing altogether and the apples and soaked oats are the crux of the dish. Sounds pretty awful to me, but if you look for pictures you will find that, like this one from Jamie Oliver, people add lots of trendy fruits, nuts and seeds to the basic mix.
I think muesli - the ordinary raw and dry stuff that you can buy in packets in the supermarket really came into its own in the 70s - the hippy era. This was overtaken by toasted muesli (now disappearing from the shelves), which has morphed into granola and clusters. Indeed if you feed muesli into Google what you get are oodles of recipes for granola. Now I do quite like toasted muesli - or granola - but not on its own - more as a topping or filling in things. I also think that these products also tend to be rather sweet.
Back to the basic muesli though. I think Charmaine Solomon's mix is very sweet - that's quite a lot of sugar she's got in there - even if it is raw sugar. Not very healthy. What you might expect from commercial brands, but not a home-made version. Delia too is somewhat appalled by sugar.
"My quarrel with some of the branded muesli is that they usually contain rather a lot of dried milk powder (which is not really something I want to eat in spoonfuls) plus the inevitable sugar, making most of them too sweet." Delia Smith
Dried milk - ugh. Why would you add that when you are going to add milk anyway? I had a look at other recipes and settled on her Home-made muesli. It's not so much a recipe either but a list of basic ingredients and then a whole lot about what you can do to it. I'll give her comments here because they really sum it all up.
"This is a basic mixture, but there are 101 variations – the nuts for instance could be roasted hazelnuts, brazils, walnuts or, if you’re feeling rich, slivered roast almonds with the skins left on.
The fruit too can be varied: chopped dates, dried apricots or figs, or chopped dried apple rings. Personally I think the proportion of fruit here make the addition of sugar unnecessary, but if it isn’t sweet enough for you add some more dried fruit.
When serving muesli you can sprinkle in some wheat bran, which will slip down unnoticed amongst all the other good things. Wheatgerm, oatgerm and oat bran can be added too and fresh fruits in season. Other optional items might be dried banana flakes or chopped dried prunes. Milk is always poured over and, if you’re trying to cut down on fats, semi-skimmed milk is better."
And there is no sugar at all in her mix. The sweetness comes from the fruit. Interestingly too she does not seem to think that fresh fruit on top is the thing to do.
These days of course, muesli has morphed as well to include all those trendy 'ancient grains, and seeds. Here is the most beautiful and the trendiest version that I found in my quick search. Of course it's from Donna Hay - and of course quinoa is involved.
Isn't it gorgeous?
As to muesli as a first recipe. Would this suck me in? Well probably not, but then at least half of the purpose of this particular cookbook is the autobiographical content, and by the time you get to the muesli you are on page 18 and have been reading all about Charmaine Solomon's ancestors. So you might have been sucked in by this - and besides it's Charmaine Solomon so you know there will be a few really tasty things in there somewhere, and the cover is rather nice too. It's different and should be applauded for that.
