Breakfast Hummus Wraps

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Call these breakfast hummus wraps- tacos/ burritos or just wraps but make them. They are easy, quick to make and packed with nutrition. Easy to make ahead, and pack it for breakfast, lunch or have them as a quick no fuss dinner.

Breakfast Hummus wrapsI love breakfast. And I love planning for it. Its so important to have a filling breakfast- sets the pace going for the day. These breakfast hummus wraps are so easy to make, yet they pack so much that you are good to go till lunch.

I feel most recipes are only guide lines, and the possibilities are endless to make them your own. Case in point- these breakfast hummus wraps/burritos. They are so easy to customize, and so many different options to try. You could use scrambled paneer instead of eggs to give it a vegetarian spin. You could add some sautéed mushrooms, black beans or even bacon or sausages. While I find them quick enough to whip up in the morning, but once our busy schedule starts again, you could also make these ahead and freeze them wrapped in parchment paper.

While we have been mainly having a single wrap for our breakfast, these breakfast hummus wraps would make a great lunch or even dinner option. You could use store bought tortilla, or make your own wraps with roti dough like I did.

Store bought hummus is fine, but as the title wrap this is a HUMMUS wrap, so make sure if you are not making your own you get the one you like the most.

Side note: it really is easy to make hummus- only thing is that it does require some prep time- soaking chickpeas, pressure cooking them, peeling the skin off for smooth hummus. You could use canned chickpeas to save time. The other components of a good hummus are tahini, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, cumin and a few cubes of ice. Trust me on this- ice cubes lend a nice creamy texture to the hummus. So does removing the skins, though it is not absolutely necessary if you have a good blender. For the taste, make sure you use the best olive oil, and lots of tahini. I am not big on sesame seeds, but hummus needs tahini and a generous amount does elevate the taste. I realize I don’t have a recipe on the blog yet, because I always add according to the boiled chickpeas I am using, and haven’t yet written the measurements down. Next time will measure so that I can share the recipe with you.

The idea for these breakfast hummus wraps actually came when I had leftover hummus from the pita falafel wraps and a mezze platter I had made. The platter had homemade falafels, homemade pita, homemade hummus among other things. You can find the recipe for the homemade falafels here. The recipe for pita and hummus is pending and have made a note to post about them soon.

Messe Platter

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Mushroom and Spinach Quiche

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A classic brunch or lunch recipe of mushroom and spinach quiche made with whole wheat crust. Also, includes recipe for homemade cream cheese using paneer.

Mushroom and spinach quiche

I can’t stress how much I love this quiche. I stumbled on this gem of a recipe for spinach quiche on Deb’s Smitten Kitchen blog ten years back and would almost make it every other week. I do not know why I stopped making the quiche but this lockdown reminded me of the recipe.

Even though I have made this mushroom and spinach quiche so many times, I have never been able to take a decent picture for the blog. Its not that I didn’t try but somehow I never thought the picture did justice to how good the quiche was, with the result that I always stopped myself from posting.

This time I took time to plan out the shot. Given that we are three people in the house and not just Anubhav and me, I try my best to plan every aspect of a shot before hand so that the food can be served warm and still I am able to get an image that I can use.

Somehow what I had envisioned and the shots that came out in the 10 minutes I gave myself to shoot didn’t quite match up. I tried to rectify it but then since we were already a little late in serving lunch and I didn’t want to serve it cold, I just let it be. I thought I will make it again- since the quiche is pretty quick to make. But since we were out of the specific ingredients for the quiche, I realized I will need to wait till we restock our refrigerator again, which won’t be for another few days. And then I thought this is what I always do, and this recipe never gets shared.

So here I am. Sharing this mushroom and spinach quiche recipe. It doesn’t require too many fancy ingredients and besides the cream cheese most ingredients are easily available at most places. In case you do not have cream cheese at home or can not easily source it, you could make it at your home. There are many easy tutorials online, you could use one of those. I am sharing my mom’s way of making cream cheese back in the day when it was not available.

Mushroom and spinach quiche

Homemade Cream Cheese

To make homemade cream cheese, first my mom would make paneer from milk. For that she would let the full fat milk come to a gentle boil over medium heat. The milk should not be boiling vigorously. It should be a gentle boil. In case it does boil vigorously, reduce the heat and bring the milk back to a gentle boil. Let it stay like that for a minute. Add a few drops of lemon juice (for 1 litre of milk). You will start seeing small curds in the milk, but no whey. Add a few more drops of lemon juice and stir. Keep adding a few drops of lemon juice till you begin to see a greenish whey separating from the curds. Switch the gas off immediately when you see the green whey separating from the curds. In total it can take 1-2 tbsp of lemon juice. You can also use vinegar.

Keep a perforated colander/sieve/pan lined with a double layered cheesecloth ready. Drain the whey, collecting the curds in the cheesecloth. Wash the curds in running cold water to remove the lemon flavor. Tie up the cheesecloth and let it drain for around 30 minutes.

If you are making paneer, post 30 minutes is when you would place a heavy weight on the paneer, to make it flatter and stick together. But since we are using it to make cream cheese, the hung curds after 30 minutes of draining are ready to be transferred to a blender. Along with some cream, blend the fresh paneer to a smooth creamy cream cheese consistency. Mom would eye ball the cream to suit taste and texture- start with 1-2 tbsp and increase if required. That’s it. Your cream cheese is ready. My mom would use this recipe to make her lemon cheesecake, and while personally I have not tried it because I somehow always have cream cheese, I have seen her make this and had her cheesecake plenty of times and love it.

Another quick cream cheese substitute that you can use is a mix of hung curd and cream. Since this is a savory recipe both substitutes given work pretty well. The paneer plus cream is a little less tart, especially if you wash out the lemon flavor from the paneer nicely in the step above.

The pastry crust recipe is adapted from Martha Stewart’s pate brisee. I use whole wheat and honestly I prefer the whole wheat crust. I know this recipe has eggs and well it is a quiche so that is expected. I do understand that many of you might not eat eggs, but if you would like to try a tart based recipe then you should definitely check out the vegetable pie recipe that is also on the blog.

Hope you get to try this recipe and if you do, please feel free to tag me in your creations on instagram, facebook or leave a comment here.

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A’s Phing/ Glass Noodle Stir fry Recipe

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Quick, weeknight gluten free recipe for phing/glass noodles stir fry. 

Phing/ Glass Noodle Stir Fry

The other day A and I spent a good part of the morning peeling garlic to make homemade ginger-garlic paste. I do not know why the skin was so tightly stuck to the garlic that it took us a while to peel all the garlic cloves. Next time I am going to try the shaking in a utensil trick that I have seen before more seriously- I tried doing it but since I wasn’t having too much luck (or maybe I wasn’t doing it correctly) I gave up. Also, I do feel the garlic peel this time was actually quite sticky- and now while typing this I probably know the reason why. These days thanks to Covid-19 we are washing all the produce we get from the market, including garlic. I mean we used to wash all our veggies before we used it in a particular recipe but now we wash them before even getting them inside the house. I make sure everything is dried completely before storing it but maybe the soaking had something to do with the garlic peels beings super clingy this time. Go figure.

Since we are talking about the cleaning process- anyone else dreading grocery days? Its a task- I feel I need the better part of the day to just wash/sanitize everything, then finding utensils to keep them so that they can dry and then finally storing them. Since we limit grocery shopping to once in 8-10 days, organizing everything while optimizing space also takes time. And while I hate the organizing days, I honestly love all the planning that is happening. I plan all the meals- make an excel sheet of the menu items, then figure what all we have in our pantry and what all needs to be bought based on those meals. I also note what all I want to reshoot, or do a blog post on. I have always been a planner. Its a different story that sometimes I don’t do anything about those plans, but I love making those tables and having a planner to put sticky notes on. Since I don’t want to spoil my styling kit planner diary, I have taken to excel to do all the planning. Part of last week’s menu excel sheet was this glass noodle stir fry recipe.

Today Anubhav makes a debut on the blog with a page dedicated to his own recipe. He makes these phing/glass noodles stir fry and since we had a packet in our pantry stocked before the lockdown he decided he will cook his glass noodle stir fry for us.

Generally, A makes it with chicken but since we were out of non vegetarian food in the refrigerator (that situation has changed now), he made his glass noodles stir fry with eggs and mushrooms. Traditionally he uses dried black mushrooms, but our INA delivery guy sent us another dried mushrooms variety which also worked pretty well. You can leave the dried mushrooms in case you don’t have them on hand. You can also use whatever veggies you have on hand.

I have used glass noodles here since I had those in my pantry. Glass or cellophane noodles (or Phing as Anubhav calls it) are noodles made from mung bean, potato, sweet potato, or tapioca starch. You could also make this with regular noodles or rice vermicelli, but glass noodles has its own charm, and honestly if you replace that this will not be the same recipe. In case you can’t make this recipe because you don’t have glass noodles in your pantry, do save it for later when you can. Its a fairly easy quick weeknight dinner and I would love for you to try it. Since the noodles are gluten free, this glass noodles stir fry is also a great gluten free meal.

You can make the recipe vegan by not adding egg. And in case you want a non vegan option, as mentioned earlier, A generally makes it with chicken so in case you do have chicken in your refrigerator, cut the chicken in strips and marinate in salt, pepper and soy for 10-15 minutes. Then cook the chicken in a little oil. And add it when you add the egg.

Hope you get to try this recipe. In case you cant now, do pin it for later. Would love to see your creations so feel free to tag me on instagram, facebook or leave a comment here.

P.S: Another glass noodles recipe that you can try from the blog is this thai glass noodle salad.

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