With dining out turning into a distant memory and more days spent indoors, it’s time to bring London’s brunch dishes to your home. From broccoli steak to veggie bowls and avocado toasts with a twist, cafés have been sharing their recipes to challenge long-time customers and brunch-loving chefs at home. So whether you’re a Londoner missing your local favourite or the person with a new found passion in the kitchen, these four London brunch dishes can easily be recreated at home.
Some of these are recipes from the cafés (Friends of Ours, Deliciously Ella Deli, nue ground), while others are my own iteration of the dish (Avo Bar, Daisy Green, Half Cup).
Grain bowl: nue ground
Hummus as smooth as silk, crunchy chickpeas and the fluffiest quinoa, nue ground serves a grain bowl that is prepared to perfection. The recipe includes really simple ingredients – it’s just about putting in a little more effort to get the textures exactly right.
*Please note I have adapted nue ground’s recipe to one person, so the measurements aren’t exactly the same as done by the chefs in their café.
Ingredients
For the grains and greens:
- 60g quinoa
- 30g kale or other greens
For the hummus:
- 400g can chickpeas, drained
- 3tbsp tahini
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2tbsp olive oil
- 1.5tsp turmeric
- 0.5tsp ground cumin
- 0.5tsp sea salt flakes
For the crispy chickpeas:
- 200g chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1tsp ground cumin
- 0.5tsp smoked paprika
- salt and black pepper
Ingredients for the pickled onions:
- 1 red onion
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1tsp flaked sea salt
Method
- Prepare the pickled onions in advance. Thinly slice the red onion, add salt and juice of the lemon. Toss together in a bowl and massage together briefly. Allow to macerate for at least 15 minutes (the longer the more pink they will be) and store in an airtight jar in the fridge for up to 1 week.
- Preheat the oven to 180C.
- Place the quinoa with 120ml water into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until water has been absorbed and quinoa is tender. Cover with lid of saucepan and allow to steam for 4-5 minutes.
- Remove lid and fluff the quinoa up with a fork. Spread out onto a tray to let it cool quickly and store in the refrigerator.
- Toss the kale together with olive oil and some salt, massage leaves until soft and evenly covered in oil.
- Place all the ingredients for the hummus into a food processor and blend until smooth. If it’s too thick, slowly add in iced water one tablespoon at a time. Pro-tip: peeling the skins off the chickpeas beforehand makes the hummus so much smoother.
- For the crispy chickpeas, pat them dry with kitchen paper to remove any excess moisture, toss with the remaining ingredients and spread out onto a baking tray. Roast in the oven for 40-50 minutes or until crispy.
- To assemble the dish, spread the hummus onto the side of a wide bowl, portion quinoa onto the opposite side and top with the greens, chickpeas and pickled red onions. Nue ground also serves this with candy beetroot, watercress, and sesame fennel dukkah.
Roasted aubergine with butterbean purée: Half Cup
Inspired by Half Cup’s aubergine dish with a tamarind glaze and butterbean purée, tamarind, I made a slightly less complicated version with a sweet miso glaze. The butterbean purée looks bland but it’s so incredibly creamy and comforting, while the glaze and toppings add sweetness to the hearty aubergine.
Ingredients
For the butterbean purée:
- 1 tin butterbeans, rinsed and drained (cannellini beans also work)
- 25g tahini paste
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 lemon
- 30ml extra virgin olive oil
- Salt
For the aubergine:
- 1 aubergine
- 1 garlic clove
- 1tbsp brown miso paste
- 1tbsp date syrup
- 1tbsp olive oil
- Salt
For the toppings:
- Pomegranate
- Nigella seeds
Method
- Preheat the oven at 180 degrees.
- Mix the miso paste with the date syrup and olive oil in a bowl.
- Cut the aubergine in half lengthwise, make small incisions in the flesh without piercing the skin. Add the miso mixture to the flesh of each aubergine half, season with salt and pepper.
- Wrap each aubergine in kitchen foil with the garlic – this will keep all the flavours inside and stop the aubergines from burning. Place them in the oven for 50 minutes, or until fully cooked through.
- To make the butterbean purée, put all the ingredients – except the oil – in a food processor, and slowly add the oil. If the puree is too thick add some water (30-50ml), until you get a smooth puree. Half Cup uses a food processor but a blender also worked for me.
- To assemble the dish, make a bed of the butterbean purée, place the roasted aubergine halves on top along with the pomegranate and nigella seeds.
Broccoli steak: Friends of Ours
A signature brunch dish from Friends of Ours in Shoreditch, this broccoli steak proves exactly how show-stopping one humble vegetable can be. Served on a bed of hummus along with drops of harissa tahini, you can either recreate every part or cheat with help from the supermarket (I used rose harissa from the brand Belazu).
Ingredients
For the broccoli steak:
- 1 broccoli
- 1tbsp sumac
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
For the hummus:
- 400g can chickpeas (leave a few chickpeas out of the can for roasting)
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1tsp Korean chili flakes
- 1 garlic clove
- Juice of half a lemon
- Salt and pepper
For the harissa tahini:
- 100g tahini
- 100g harissa
For the toppings:
- pomegranate
- za’atar
- handful of coriander
- chickpeas
Method
- Preheat the oven to 190C, fan setting
- Slice the broccoli in half, cut off the bottom end of the stalk and season the whole vegetable with sumac, salt and pepper. Drizzle in olive oil and roast in the oven on a baking tray for 35-40 minutes, until the stem is soft and the head is crispy on top.
- Add some chickpeas to the baking tray after 10 minutes, so they go nice and crispy without burning.
- For the hummus, mix all the ingredients together in a food processor or blender. If you’re using a blender, add some almond milk or water if needed to blend the mixture.
- For the harissa tahini, place the tahini in a bowl and stir through the harissa (send me a message on Instagram if you want the harissa recipe used by Friends of Ours, but it needs adapting for one person).
- Create a bed with the hummus and place the broccoli on top, along with the roasted chickpeas, dollops of harissa tahini, pomegranate, coriander and za’atar spices.
Avocado on sweet potato toast: Avo bar
There are so many different ways to do avocado toast and I love this version inspired by Avo Bar, which swaps bread for a soft slab of sweet potato toast.
Ingredients
- 1 sweet potato
- 1 avocado
- juice of half a lime
- 1 large handful of watercress
- dollop of labneh or coconut yoghurt
- Salt and pepper
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C.
- Peel the top-half of the sweet potato, leaving the bottom of the skin on. Pierce the sweet potato a few times a fork, wrap in tinfoil and bake in the oven for 45 minutes, until soft all the way through.
- Scoop the avocado out into a bowl and mash up with a fork. Add the lime juice, salt and pepper and mix through the smash.
- Once the sweet potato is soft, remove the foil and add the avocado smash, watercress and labneh/coconut yoghurt.
Avocado on toast: Daisy Green
A staple on every Australian brunch menu, Daisy Green’s avocado on toast stands out by using small ingredients that come together as one – it’s refreshing, creamy, a bit crunchy and with the exact right amount of heat. My version comes with sourdough – not cold-fermented activated charcoal sourdough like at Daisy Green – and supermarket-bought labneh, which is almost as satisfying as the real deal.
Ingredients
- 1 avocado
- slice of bread
- juice of half a lime
- 2 spring onions
- handful of spinach
- 1tsp chilli flakes
- salt and pepper
- ¼ cucumber
Method
- Scoop the avocado out into a bowl with the limejuice, salt and pepper. Mash up with a fork to create a consistency that is spreadable yet still a bit chunky.
- Chop the spring onions and cucumber into fine slices.
- Toast a slice of sourdough (or any other bread you want), spread a layer of labneh onto the toast and the avocado smash on top.
- Add the spring onions and chilli flakes as toppings to your toast, along with the finely sliced cucumbers and spinach leaves on the side.
