Millet Porridge with Roasted Oranges & Almonds, 3 Ways

Directions

1. Make the porridge
2. Soak the millet with a tablespoon of lemon juice overnight. Soaking with an acid (the lemon) makes grains easier to digest.
3. The next day, give it a rinse. To cook, bring 2.5 cups of water to a boil, add the millet and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, turn the flame down to low, and simmer till tender. Shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so.
4. While the millet is cooking, zest your oranges. You will only need a couple of teaspoons for the pot of porridge, but you may as well zest them all and save the rest. All you have to do is put the remaining zest in a small container, cover with olive oil and refrigerate. Later, brush the zesty oil on fish or chicken or stir it into a lovely cauliflower velouté
5. A word on zesting. Try not to get any of the white pith from the peel, it's bitter. All you want is the orange skin. This handy rasp will help prevent any pithy mishaps. You should definitely invest in one. It's one of my most prized kitchen tools.
6. Next, carve off the peel so that it looks like the naked orange pictured. All you have to do is slice off the top and bottom, then using a paring knife and starting at the top, slice off strips, following the shape of the fruit, all the way down using a short, sawing motion.
7. You will end up with a pile of skins with some of the orange adherent. Don't throw these away. Instead, render them of their juices by just pressing it out with your thumb into a medium pan which you will need in the next step.
8. Slice your oranges, cross-wise, into disks and place, single layer, into the waiting pan, along with any residual juice from the cutting board, and, of course, that which you have pressed from the peels.
9. Drizzle the orange slices with honey and sprinkle with cinnamon, then pop under the broiler until they get blistery and brown and the juice bubbles and reduces a bit.
10. Meanwhile, rough chop your almonds. Do the same for your prunes.
11. Check your millet. When it's tender, fluff it with a fork. Then pour in about a cup and a quarter almond milk, or enough to give it a porridge consistency, and gently fluff with the fork again. You don't want it to get gluey, and it will if you stir it too hard.
12. Now get your oranges, along with their juices, into the pot along with two tablespoons of the almond meal (omit if you are using store bought almond milk), a couple of teaspoons of orange zest, about half-teaspoon cinnamon and incorporate by fluffing. These measures are all guidelines. Feel free to add more or less to suit your taste.
13. Spoon the porridge into your loveliest bowls, the ones that you use when you want to celebrate, and top with the chopped almonds and sliced prunes. Drizzle with honey if you'd like, though I take mine without, and spoon a couple of tablespoons of almond milk over the top.

1. Make The Almond Milk
2. Soak a cup of almonds with enough water to cover overnight. Countertop is fine.
3. The next day, drain the almonds, and pop them into a blender with the cup and a half of water and blend on high speed until quite smooth.
4. Next, over a large measuring glass measuring cup with a spout, pour the almond milk into a chinois, a funnel shaped strainer, or any kind of fine-mesh strainer that you have.
5. Stir the mixture vigorously to render it of the 'milk', pressing the solids against the sides. The resulting meal should be quite dry.
6. Use the almond milk in the recipe as outlined above, or in any of your hot or cold cereals. It's also lovely in place of a glass of milk. Consider adding a half teaspoon of vanilla extract to the almonds during blending, or sweetening with brown rice syrup. Caution: this almond milk will 'break' in hot beverages, that unsavory curdling that you see with some nut and soy milks, so you may want to avoid using it in coffee or tea. What a shame.