Thursday, April 12, 2012

Maple syrup and olive oil granola


I'm back! It only took two and a half years... But to be fair I've been a bit busy since I came home from Ireland: opening a café (not mine, someone else's); falling out spectacularly with boss at said café (but that's another story); working on this Sustain project; trying and only very occasionally succeeding to conquer breakfast service at the lovely Clerkenwell Kitchen; and, most recently, having a baby.


Ever since I got pregnant last November - no! the November before last, blimey - I vowed that when I went on maternity leave I'd start my long-neglected blog up again. After all, plenty of mums juggle blogs and small people - this woman, and this one, and my friend Anne, and you can bet that these two bloggers-with-buns-in-the-oven aren't going to let a mere baby get between them and the computer screen. (And that's not counting the legions of women who blog about motherhood itself - a laugh-out-loud-on-the-train-home example of the genre here.) Hats off to you, ladies, cos nearly 9 months have slid by - enough time to grow another baby, dammit! - and I've managed not a single post. Until now (we won't talk about the fact that this one took me a month to write).


You need to know about this granola recipe. The WORLD needs to know. I gave some to two fellow February birthday girls, and both gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up - one began her thanks-for-the-nice-granola text with "Holy shit, Charles…!" which I think is how I'd like all compliments to be prefaced from now on. ("Holy shit Charles, your hair looks amazing!" - hmm, not so likely at the present time, or perhaps indeed ever, but I can dream.) I feel quite evangelical about this recipe. Since I started making it I've sent it to at least half a dozen people, and now, through this blog, another... oooh... half dozen or so might get to read it. I am doing my duty.


I've been looking for my perfect granola recipe for a long time. Back in my festival catering days I used to make great big vats of it to serve with fruit, honey and an incredible, thick, yellowish natural yoghurt made from Jersey milk by a dairy in the Cotswolds that has sadly since bitten the dust. It was good stuff, dark and crunchy, cinnamon-scented and packed with nuts and seeds and dried fruit, but it wasn't perfect - your jaw started to ache a bit towards the end of a helping, and after toasting load after industrial load of the stuff, I started to get a bit sick of the smell of it.


This granola, by comparison, makes light work for the jaws and has a cleaner, sweet-savoury flavour, thanks to an unlikely-sounding but insanely addictive combination of maple syrup, olive oil and sea salt. Now, forgive me if I get all granola-geek on yo asses for a moment, but I always thought the clumpiness of granola was of paramount importance – individual flakes of oat, bits of nut and seeds just didn’t cut it. But I've changed... and now I am prepared to go out on a limb and say that crispy crunch trumps clumps. There’s the advertising jingle sorted already. Anyway, with this granola you get both – although I will concede that here, the clusters are so delicately formed that by the bottom of the jar, most of them have disintegrated into individual niblets. That doesn’t matter as they still taste bloody lovely – just ask Anne, who finished off her birthday batch straight from the jar.


I like it by the fistful too, but lately I’ve also been eating it with Greek yoghurt (a breastfeeding perk – full fat everything, no guilt) and steamed apple. I know steamed apple sounds like something you would only feed to the elderly and infirm or babies (and in fact I did initially steam it to feed to 7-month-old Isaac) – but it’s intensely appley and surprisingly delicious, and a nicely fresh, virtuous foil to the rich, sharp yoghurt and sweetly, saltily moreish granola. Seriously, this is the crack cocaine of breakfast cereals – I find it impossible to walk by a recently baked batch cooling on its trays without a nugget or several ending up in my mouth. Another bonus (assuming you agree that the crack cocaine bit is a bonus) is that this is the easiest, most fuss-free granola I’ve ever made – which is a good thing, considering how easy it is to polish a batch off.


I got the recipe from Orangette (such a beautiful blog), and I haven’t changed it much – just added some sesame seeds for extra crunch, and inched down the sweetness a little bit (those Yanks sure like their sugar). Sometimes I make it with flaked almonds instead of coconut, depending on what’s in the cupboard. You could fiddle with the combination of grains, nuts and seeds a lot more, just don’t mess with the olive-oil-brown-sugar-maple-syrup-and-salt part too much. On the dried fruit: usually I’m a fan of dried fruit in a granola, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this one is so good, it doesn’t need it. Cranberries do look pretty in the jar though.

Maple syrup and olive oil granola
Adapted from Orangette, who adapted it from Nekisia Davis of Early Bird Foods


300g jumbo oats
120g pumpkin seeds
120g sunflower seeds
50g sesame seeds
130g walnuts, in halves or pieces (or pecans – but I always use walnuts because pecans are so eye-wateringly expensive)
50g coconut flakes OR 75g flaked almonds
1/2 tsp fine sea salt (or use 1 tsp of a flaky one like Maldon, but crush it a bit between your fingers)
50g light or dark brown sugar
150ml maple syrup
120ml olive oil
Dried fruit such as sour cherries or cranberries, if you like


Preheat the oven to 150C and line one big or two smaller baking trays with parchment. Mix the oats, nuts, seeds, brown sugar and salt together in a big bowl, breaking up any clumps of brown sugar with your fingers. Add the maple syrup and olive oil and mix again. Scrape out onto the baking tray(s), making sure you’ve got all the precious oily, syrupy goodness out of the bowl. Bake for around 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes (set a timer – burnt granola is a terrible thing). When the granola is toastily golden, take it out of the oven, taste it, and add more salt if you like. Allow it to cool, reminding yourself that it would be good to have some left for breakfast. It will crisp up as it cools, and some of it will set into big jaggedy clusters. Once cool, stir in the dried fruit if using – gently, so as to keep some clusters intact – and transfer to airtight containers. Put containers on a very high shelf or at the back of a cupboard, or resign yourself to making another batch very soon indeed.

1 comment:

  1. Welcome back to the blog-o-sphere C! This granola is a-mazing. I couldn't stop hoovering it from the jar. I must never make it, it won't last 5 minutes in my house...x

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