My Detox: How to Make One Chef’s Zen-Inspired Breakfast

In our series My Detox, T asks creative people to share the homemade recipes they count on to cleanse and refresh.

The New York-based chef Camille Becerra works with fresh, seasonal, vibrantly hued ingredients — golden kabocha squash, brilliant red barberries, purple ninja radishes — but not in a manner that, as she puts it, feels “excessively healthy.” Becerra, who was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New Jersey, developed her visually distinct, flavorful culinary style in the ’90s, working in mostly female-run, often vegetarian, restaurants in and around New York. A formative stint at Angelica Kitchen in the East Village, for instance, taught her the finer points of the dragon bowl — a traditional macrobiotic dish of layered whole grains, vegetables, beans and fermented garnishes — which she later transformed into an Instagram sensation during a residency at the now-shuttered Café Henrie in 2016. (Demand for her pink-tinged version, topped with turmeric-poached eggs, goji berries and beet pickle, nearly maxed out the cafe’s tiny kitchen.) Becerra’s plant-forward approach also shaped the menus at the stylish seafood restaurant Navy (where she ran the kitchen from 2014 to 2015) and De Maria, the all-day cafe she opened in NoLIta in 2017. Since the latter space closed, in 2018, she has divided her time between multiple projects, including food styling, consulting and developing her own health-focused food line and cookbook (it “deals with the instinctual aspects of food and cooking with the senses,” she says).

When cooking for herself, Becerra eats a robust, usually vegetarian lunch, and a light, almost snack-like, dinner, which she says is better for digestion. To stay energized, she starts the day with a bowl of hearty (but not heavy) breakfast porridge. The rice-and-oat-based dish is an updated version of the breakfast she ate while cooking at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center, a Buddhist retreat in New Mexico, where Becerra worked in 1995, soon after graduating from culinary school. “We would have these wonderful mixed-grain porridges with rice flour, which makes the dish much lighter than a traditional porridge, almost like a congee,” she says. Becerra put her spin on the recipe by adding cranberry molasses for a tart tang, black sesame gomashio for a salty note and a drizzle of cold-pressed cranberry seed oil, sourced from her friend, Atef Boulaabi, the co-owner of SOS Chef. “The flavor is super delicious — it has this buttery and vanilla note,” she says of the antioxidant-rich berry oil that she also pats on her skin to fend off dryness in winter.

Rather than coffee, Becerra drinks saffron water in the morning. The recipe, a gift from Boulaabi, involves soaking the plant’s ruby-colored threads in water overnight to release the nutrients and flavor. “It has a savory note, and is floral-y but not in the way of a rosewater — it’s much subtler,” says Becerra, adding that the elixir helps clear her mind and increase her concentration. Here, the chef shares her restorative breakfast recipes, which she calls “pure fuel for the day.”

Camille Becerra’s Rice and Oat Porridge With Cranberry Molasses

Serves 1

• 1 ¾ cups of water

• ¼ cup of rolled oats

• ¼ cup of rice flour

• Pinch of salt

• Pinch of cinnamon

• Pinch of cardamom

• 2 to 3 tablespoons cranberry molasses (recipe below)

• Pinch of black sesame gomashio (recipe below)

• 1 tablespoon of cold-pressed cranberry seed oil

1. Bring water to a boil, whisk in the oats, rice flour, salt, cinnamon and cardamom, and simmer on low for 10 minutes. (“If you have leftover cooked rice, adding it in with the oats and rice flour will turn out a heartier porridge,” says Becerra.)

2. Ladle the porridge into a shallow bowl, top with cranberry molasses and a couple of pinches of gomashio, and drizzle with cranberry seed oil.

Cranberry Molasses

• 10 ounces (about 3 cups) fresh or frozen cranberries

• 1 ½ cups of water

• ¼ to ½ cup of raw honey (to taste)

1. Combine cranberries and 1 cup of water in a blender. Blend for 30 seconds then transfer to a medium-sized, heavy bottom pot.

2. Add the remaining ½ cup water to the blender and swirl to clean out any purée that was left behind; combine with purée in the pot.

3. Simmer on medium low heat for 30 minutes, stirring every five minutes to prevent the molasses from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

4. Remove pot from heat, add honey and mix well. Store in the refrigerator up to one month in a glass container. “This is also great on top of yogurt and in smoothies — and it adds an element of tartness to salad dressings, sauces and marinades,” says Becerra.

Black Sesame Gomashio

• ½ cup black sesame seeds

• ¼ teaspoon sea salt

1. Toast sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium to high heat, until fragrant, about two to four minutes depending on the thickness of your pan.

2. Transfer to a mortar and pestle along with the salt, and pound slightly until most of the sesame seeds are slightly nicked. Store in a glass jar for use on your porridge, rice dishes, salad and soups.

Saffron Water

• 10 to 15 saffron threads

• 1 liter filtered water

Add saffron threads to water and allow the infusion to steep overnight in the refrigerator. “I recommend drinking a four-ounce serving each morning,” says Becerra.