Recipe: Breakfast Pepper Mix

Haha, this one is especially for Raising Mercury requesting healthy recipes. My family isn’t really a super-duper health concerned family other than always keeping our sugar intake to absolute minimum (family history has occasional diabetes), like tea with no sugar.

Although this recipe frys the food, I still say it’s healthy because there’s a lot of ingredients; the balance of veggies, meat and carbo. Mak only makes these in a huge batch in the morning so she could eat it again by noon (unless big brother Arsenal drops by, then the Pepper Mix is gone before mid-morning).

I don’t have the step-by-step photos, mainly because I wasn’t around when Mak cook this (too lazy to get out of bed) but as all you need is a wok and a large pepper grinder, it’ll be cool.

Pepper Mix.

Ingredients:
Some whole grain bread slices, 4 at least.
Potatoes, thickly sliced.
Carrots, sliced.
Broccoli, chopped.
Japanese cucumber, sliced (optional).
Onions, chopped.
Canned button mushrooms, sliced OR soaked shiitake mushrooms, sliced (optional).
Hot dogs
At least 2 burger patties (optional).
Lots and lots of grinded pepper.
NO SALT!

1. First up, boil the hot dogs until it’s soft and meaty, then slice them. Fry the burger patties on a pan (I used Ramly brand) until they’re half-cooked, then add in the sliced hot dogs. Fry them together until they’re done (frying the hot dogs gives it a grilled taste).

2. If you don’t want to use meat, use mushrooms! Slice some canned button mushroom or some shiitake mushroom (after it’s been soaked long enough to turn soft) and fry them in cooking oil.

*Note: Mak usually use meat or mushrooms as an excuse to reduce adding salt, or not add salt at all. You can still use both meat and mushrooms but it’ll be very, very filling (Ayah complains it’s Mak’s fault that he’s fat).*

3. Remove the meats/mushrooms from the pan and put them in a serving bowl. If you’re cooking burger patties, cut them into smaller pieces. Now fry the potatoes until it’s cooked. Poke it with a fork to see how soft you want it to be.

4. Remove the potatoes and also add them into the serving bowl. Now fry the carrots slices and chopped broccoli until, yes, soft and juicy. Occasionally, Mak often adds sliced Japanese cucumber into the frying veggies for more vitamins.

5. Once veggies done, that too goes into the serving bowl. Now you can fry the onions. To add a bit of spicy-ness, chop a bit of fresh chilli and fry them with the onions.

Note: If you’re wondering why all this stuff had to be fried seperately, it’s because the potatoes cook longer than the onions and the veggies don’t fry well if the heat is too high. Frying everything at once also takes longer to cook.*

6. For the last bit, toast the whole grain bread slices and then cut them into squares. Mix in all the cooked ingredients by tossing them like salad with a healthy dose of pepper. It helps if you had pounded the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar first.

7. Add an easy spray of oil and best served hot. It still taste good after it cooled, which you can eat it as a snack throughout the day.

This recipe was made soon after BabyNabil got over his teething and wanted to bite into everything. We can’t let him eat our too-long-french fries or thick daging masak merah so the Breakfast Pepper Mix was a hit because of the bite-sized pieces.

However, there is this mysterious phenomenon, but maybe it’s only in my house. Take note though. If you cook this with the meats and left the food on the open table, the meats tend to disappear to a smaller amount from time to time.

Either cooking this creates a black hole in the serving bowl, or somebody kept popping food into his mouth with his fingers when no one is looking. Maybe I better ask big brother Arsenal as this happens most often when he’s home.