Fortified porridge

Here's another delicious brown rice recipe - perfect for that winter warm-up early in the morning. It packs a punch and you'll feel like you swallowed a bowling ball afterwards, but on the upside you won't be hungry for about 6 or 7 hours.

Ingredients
1 cup of rolled oats
3 cups of soy milk or water
1 tablespoon of raisins
1 teaspoon of sea salt
1 cup of cooked brown rice
1 apple, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon of hazelnuts, chopped, or almonds
Honey to taste

Method
1. Add the raisins to the milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil.
2. Stir in the oats, salt, chopped apple and nuts.
3. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes over a gentle heat.
4. Add the brown rice and cook for a further 2 minutes.
5. Sweeten to taste with honey.
6. Serve with milk, cream or yoghurt.

It makes enough for about 3 people.

Ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter

A recent visit to bill's at Darlinghurst inspired me to try bill's divine ricotta hotcakes at home.

I didn't take a detour from art class and become a fabulously successful, self-taught, international foodie (www.bills.com.au) along the way, but my ricotta hotcakes were not bad. Not as nice as Bill's (how does he get them so flat?) but definitely tasty! I also now have a log of honeycomb butter for later so that will be nice on toast.

Ingredients - hotcakes
1 1/3 cups of ricotta                                1 pinch of salt
3/4 cups of milk                                       50 g of butter
4 eggs separated                                      2 bananas or a punnet of strawberries
1 cup of plain flour                                  icing sugar for dusting
1 teaspoon of baking powder

Ingredients - honeycomb butter
250g of unsalted butter (softened)
100g Crunchie
2 tablespoons of honey

Method - hotcakes
1. Place ricotta, milk and eggs in a bowl and mix to combine. Use a wooden spoon, not beaters.
2.  Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a separate bowl. Add to the ricotta mixture and mix until just combined.
3. Place egg whites in a bowl and beat until stiff mountainous peaks form.
4. Fold the egg whites through the batter in two batches using a metal spoon.
5. Lightly grease a large non-stick frying pan with a small amount of butter and drop two tablespoons of batter per hotcake into the pan. Cook over a low to medium heat for 2 minutes or until golden.
6. Turn hotcakes over and cook until golden on other side. Ensure they are cooked through. (yes, you might have to have a taste!)
7. Place on a plate and assemble with other ingredients. Sliced banana or strawberries with a slice (or chunk) of honeycomb butter and dusted with a small amount of icing sugar. Dribble or lash with maple syrup, according to your taste.

Method - honeycomb butter
1. Place all ingredients in food processor and blend until smooth.
2. Shape into a log on plastic wrap, roll, seal and chill in fridge for about 2 hours.
3. Use remainder of butter on toast (from the Bowan Island Bakery www.bowanislandbakery.com.au)

Thank you Bill Granger. For those who want more of Bill's recipes, he has a recipe every Sunday in the Independent on Sunday (www.independent.co.uk) and he also used to contribute to Delicious magazine (www.taste.com.au/delicious).