Serves 4
There’s a café in Los Angeles called Sqirl that serves a milky rice porridge topped with jam and chopped nuts, both of which—the restaurant and the porridge—have an almost cult-like following. I had been making brown rice breakfast cereal for over a decade using brown rice milled into the texture of Cream of Wheat, but I got the idea from Squirl to cook the whole grains until they completely lose their shape. I use a mix of rice and quinoa, but you can make it with all rice or all quinoa.
This is not a last-minute breakfast, as you cook the grains for over an hour. You can, however, make a big batch on a lazy Sunday (assuming people still have those), and heat it up throughout the week.
½ cup long- or short-grain brown rice, rinsed
½ cup white quinoa, rinsed
3 cups milk (or almond milk), plus more for serving
¼ cup organic sugar (or turbinado or granulated sugar)
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Quality fruit jam
Fresh seasonal fruit (such as figs, blueberries, peaches, nectarines)
Almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, or pecans, toasted (see here)
Combine the rice, quinoa, milk, sugar, salt, and 3 cups water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When the liquid starts bubbling around the edges, reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook the grains, stirring occasionally so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot and a skin doesn’t form on the top, until the rice is completely broken down and shapeless and the porridge is a soupy consistency, about 1 hour (the quinoa tends to maintain its shape). If the liquid is almost completely cooked off but you feel the grains could be cooked more, add more water and keep cooking. Serve hot, topped with the jam, the fruit, and nuts of your choice, and more milk.