Brunch for a cool Autumn Morning

Do you know the "Australian Crawl" song "Beautiful People"? It's a classic piece of Australian 80s Rock from my formative years. It has 2 lines that come back to me from time to time - "Beautiful People - their garden's full of furniture, their house is full of plants" which I just like and "They've got friends who just flew in from L.A." And I sometimes do have those friends - 2 of my very favourite people came for breakfast on Saturday morning - fairly fresh off the plane from LA - Merran, a friend from high school and her nearly one year old baby, Oliver. We feel a special bond with him because we were staying with them when he came home from hospital and for those first few days which was very special.


They came early (due to jet-lag body-clocks and a busy schedule of people to show Oliver to on his first trip to Australia) so I guess it was actually breakfast.


We started with freshly squeezed orange and pineapple juice (well really we started with a round of enthusiastic hugs - but you want to know about the food I expect)




Then we had a fruit and yoghurt breakfast entree.

Honeydew melon, kiwi fruit and fresh figs with greek yoghurt drizzled in honey, whilst playing with Oliver on the rug. 










Next was breakfast main - Eggs Florentine with fried roma tomatoes. I haven't made Hollandaise Sauce since catering college - but will definitely do it again. Found a very detailed recipe on taste.com.au which worked really well. Had one dash to the sink for cold water as the eggs appeared to begin scrambling - but rescued it! So there were:
* toasted wholemeal english muffins, 
* 2 bunches of English Spinach washed and very quickly wilted in melted butter while still a little wet - (I love the colour of the spinach) and then put in a seive for a few minutes to drain)
* poached eggs from our chickens
* lashings of Hollandaise Sauce on top! I used the recipe above, except that I used a white wine vinegar reduction instead of water as the base.


There was also some Roma tomatoes, diced and slowly cooked with salt, pepper and olive oil for the side. 


We took a break to introduce Oliver to chickens and a trampoline - both of which were a hit and then he fell gorgeously asleep on the rug.


Finally Mia made fabulous Ginger Scones for Breakfast dessert with a pot of T2 French Earl Grey Tea. Delicious! I think you'll be able to get the recipe for them on her blog some day soon.

A great way to start the weekend!!


Nicola