Anna I find it highly enjoyable wandering through the market and finding produce that was just picked that morning. When you step away from the rigid, grocery-list-first mentality, cooking transforms from a chore and into creative art!
After a very successful month of market meals, I created another special menu with a weekend brunch theme! We are going for a fusion style brunch with French inspired radishes and eggs on toast, Vietnamese spring rolls PNW style, and a unique Japanese dessert sandwich stuffed with fresh fruits and cream!
Meal Planning With Farmers Market Finds
As a teacher, meal planning is both fun and essential. If I had an unlimited budget I would probably blow it all away accidentally with specialty ingredients or food related things. I love cooking with new ingredients! But since I do have a food budget, it adds another layer to the game I play each week.
Unlike other big food content creators, I don’t have a budget to buy specialty ingredients just for a single meal. What I make isn’t just for a photo shoot. It’s what we eat for dinner! However, I’ve found that if you buy a few stars and incorporate them throughout several meals instead of just one, it turns cooking into a fun creative experience! Market meals aren’t recipe driven, they are ingredient inspired!
My Ultimate Brunchy Menu
This menu showcases all the beautiful ingredients I sourced from the Battle Ground Market. Vibrant french breakfast radishes, fragrant green onions, a beautiful parcel of nasturtium flowers, fresh berries, crisp sugar snap peas, and local sourdough bread. It was quite exciting to take home! Once I got home the ideas ran wild! In the end I decided to opt for a brunch menu for the month of June!
To me, a brunch menu includes all the fun cheffy things you don’t always have time to make regularly. It involves lots of color, flavors, textures, and something unexpected! I do love a spinach quiche, but let’s be honest, we can do better than an 80’s style spread with quiche lorraine.
So, ready for my brunch menu? Let’s go!
Mains: A Toast To Write Home About
I do not like radishes…scratch that. I did not like radishes until I tried these gorgeous french breakfast radishes I found at the market. French breakfast radishes are vibrant, sweeter, and waaay cuter than the traditional spicy, almost bitter radishes you find at the grocery store. I had a delightful conversation with the grower about how sweet and mild they were and came home inspired and ready to try them!
With only a small window to experiment (my baby was napping) I chose to loosely follow a classic french recipe I found online that was sourdough toast topped with radishes, ricotta and a poached egg. I decided to put my take on this classic by complimenting the faintly sweet and spicy radishes with a simple miso maple butter. Less than 15 minutes later I had sautĂ©ed the radishes, toasted the bread, and poached an egg. I didn’t have ricotta on hand but I did happen to have brie! I know…not everyone has brie just living in their fridge… I like to snack on cheese and crackers for fast lunches!
It isn’t often that I nail a recipe on the first try, but this was a truly special bite. When cooked, radishes lose their peppery crunch and transform into juicy, firm but yielding sweeter, versions of themselves. The best way to describe the texture is almost like a grape? You would think they cook down like carrots or beets, but they are quite juicy when sautĂ©ed in butter. Miso and maple perfectly compliment the peppery, earthy, and slightly bitter radishes. The slight funk from the brie cheese was a beautiful pairing and added an ultra creamy texture. My favorite part was cutting into the perfect soft poached egg and letting the yolk ooze over the radishes and toast. The runny yolk was the perfect creamy sauce for this brunch showstopper. Topped with a couple grinds of fresh black pepper and flaky salt, this was extremely special.
I mean, if you saw this on a brunch menu, wouldn’t you immediately want to try this?
Miso-Maple Radish & Sourdough Brie Toast With Poached Eggs
“Crispy toasted sourdough layered with creamy melted brie, topped with caramelized maple-miso sautĂ©ed radishes, and finished with two perfectly poached eggs. Sweet, savory, and wonderfully earthy.”
It’s unexpected, totally delicious, and perfectly honors the produce that makes it special!
Miso-Maple Radish & Sourdough Brie Toast With Poached Eggs
Ingredients
- 1 bunch of french breakfast radishes (about 1-2 lb)
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon white miso paste
- 2 teaspoons maple syrup
- 2 green onions
- 4 eggs
- 4 slices of sourdough bread toasted
- brie cheese. My preference is Saint Angel brie cheese. It’s light, buttery, and mild.
- flaky salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Boil your water to prep for poaching your eggs and toast your sourdough bread.
- Wash and cut the tops off your radishes. Cut the radishes in half and finely chop the green onions. In a skillet, melt the butter and miso paste over medium low. Add the diced green onions and saute 2-3 minutes. Add the maples syrup and radishes. Cover and cook 4-5 minutes. The miso paste and maple syrup caramelize quickly so make sure you aren’t putting the temperature too high!
- While the radishes are cooking, poach your eggs. I prefer 4-minute eggs. Spread a generous layer of Saint Angel brie cheese onto your toasts. Spoon some caramelized radishes on the toast and top it off with your perfect poached egg. Sprinkle with flaky salt and a hint of black pepper.
Mains: Why Have One When You Can Have Two?
Isn’t it weird that it is totally normal to eat leaves on a daily basis but we don’t often eat flowers? For whatever reason it feels odd to eat flowers. What does a flower taste like? Well in the case of nasturtiums and calendula flowers, they are peppery and reminiscent of arugula. I was very excited to utilize the edible flowers I got from the market. However, I couldn’t just use them as decoration. They had to go into my menu!
I adore Vietnamese spring rolls. This dish seemed like the perfect vessel to showcase the flavor of edible flowers. If you were perusing the menu of a restaurant, would these catch your eye?
Garden Party Spring Rolls
“A visual and flavorful celebration of spring. Tender chicken, crisp veggies, and sprouts wrapped in rice paper with edible flowers. Served alongside a creamy, sweet-and-savory dipping sauce.”
Edible flowers are not necessary, but if one is going through the trouble of hosting a brunch, you may as well make it cute! I wouldn’t say that this is a strict recipe. There are tons of spring roll recipes out there that are much more well thought out. Mine are essentially a salad that you can dip into sauce!
I love using leftover rotisserie chicken or roasted chicken as the protein, but you can opt for tofu, beef, or any kind of protein you prefer. Again, this isn’t a very strict recipe. If you want an exact formula, feel free to look up a precise recipe online. I like to wing it with my spring roll fillings. What makes this special is the use of edible flowers. Traditionally you have Thai basil as a major flavor component in spring rolls. I just replaced the herbaceous flavor of Thai basil with edible flowers as a colorful and unique twist!
Garden Party Spring Rolls
Ingredients
- Round rice paper wrappers
- Cooked leftover chicken (shredded or strips)
- Edible flowers (nasturtiums or calendula)
- 2-3 green onions
- Thinly sliced carrot strips
- Cucumber sliced in strips
- Bean sprouts
- Avocado sliced in strips
- French breakfast radishes sliced in strips
- Garden lettuce
- Rice vermicelli
Directions
- Cut your green onions at a diagonal so you have thin strips of green onion. Slice and cut all your veggies thinly and slice the protein into strips or shreds Arrange the edible flowers, chicken, cucumber, avocado, carrots, lettuce, bean sprouts, green onions, and radishes on a plate or cutting board so you can grab what you need.
- Boil water and soak the rice vermicelli for about 5 minutes while you are prepping the veggies. Set aside some boiled water to soak the rice paper wrappers.
- Fill a shallow dish or pie pan with warm water. Submerge on sheet of rice paper for 3-5 seconds. Lay it flat on a plate. I prefer to let part of the rice paper hang over the edge of the plate so it is easier to roll later.
- Arrange your edible flowers face down in the center of the paper so you can see them on the other side. layer the spring rolls with lettuce to act as a barrier. top the lettuce with your green onions, chicken, cucumbers, bean sprouts, avocado, vermicelli noodles, carrots, radishes or whatever veggies you want to add. Top it with another layer of lettuce so it locks in the filling.
- Roll your spring roll up like a burrito. I am no expert burrito roller, so if you need advice, there are many step by step spring roll making videos out there! I just know that you should absolutely not overfill the spring rolls. I usually do though. đŸ˜€ It will taste delicious even if it’s falling apart or if a carrot pokes through.
- Dip it into soy sauce, the classic peanut dipping sauce, Japanese Bachans BBQ sauce, or ranch salad dressing! (it is a salad after all!)
Dessert: Sandwiches For Dessert?
The final special ingredients I brought home were seasonal berries. Right now we have blueberries, rainier cherries, marionberries, loganberries and a few strawberries in season. I LOVE the bounty of early summer!
I recently made a whole post about Japanese Cream Sandos so I won’t post the recipe again, but seriously, YOU NEED TO MAKE THESE! It might be hard to source milk bread if you aren’t near an Asian bakery, but you can either bake the milk bread yourself or opt for a different type of soft sweet bread like brioche. It isn’t exactly the same, but it will be absolutely delicious!
What a unique way to end a truly special fusion-style brunch with a dessert that celebrates the pure flavor of PNW produce.
Don’t Forget The Fun Drink!
But wait! Brunch isn’t brunch without a fun drink! I found a sweet syrup made from strawberry wine this time. It’s very similar to last month’s drink, but strawberry flavored!
Strawberry Wine Cream Soda
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 tbsp wtrawberry wine syrup
- 6-8 oz sparkling water
- Coconut creamer
Directions
- In a cup, add the strawberry wine syrup and sparkling water. Stir to combine and taste. Add more syrup or sparkling water if you want it less sweet or sweeter.
- If you want a cream soda, pour in a splash of coconut creamer! Because this is a wine syrup, there is still enough acid in the syrup to curdle normal cream. Enjoy!
This was a super special food month, and I cannot wait to see what I can find in the month of July!
~Happy eating!
