posh and fast

Got to say, the brunch isn't a thing for me. The whole overdone and languid way we've allowed a once in a while treat to become a must do twice a week got to have eggs with Hollandaise fanfare has found this particular meal period into the why don't you just eat when you're hungry box. That aside, I bet mushrooms on toast come close behind the Benedict in the late breakfast (which we'll use as a reference now) popularity stakes.

I know when it's close to my birthday that the gathering of wild ceps are in full swing, so now's the time to take advantage of the fungi daddy of them all and elevate anything mushroom related. My birthday treat used to be gathering conkers with my Grandpa, but we're all a bit more grown up these days. This is dead fast to knock up, a bit posh and real fast food. Best eaten with a mug of hot tea, you keep your unnecessary Mimosas to yourselves. 

Ceps and shallots on toasted brioche

Serves 4

Far from everyday beans on toast, this makes for a very posh and fast weekend brunch late breakfast.

2 tblsp olive oil
400g fresh ceps, thickly sliced
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
25g unsalted butter
2 banana shallots (or 4 regular shallots), finely sliced
1 garlic clove, skin-on
Few sprigs thyme, leaves picked
Small handful flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
4 thick slices of brioche, toasted

Heat a sauté pan until hot and add the oil and ceps. Fry for 3-4 minutes until golden brown, stirring occasionally. Season well with salt and pepper. 

Add the butter, shallots, garlic and thyme. Cook for a few more minutes until the shallots have softened, then stir through the chopped parsley. 

Pile the mushrooms and shallots on to the toasted brioche slices and serve immediately.

sausages and mushrooms

or the full on fry up

Serves 4 very happy people

Everybody seriously must love a properly cooked breakfast. No one in the world cooks breakfast like we do - mushrooms, tomatoes, proper local sausages, fat bacon, black pudding, fried bread and potato, with lots of tea and toast. 

I've recently fallen back in love with something cooked in the morning, and as unhealthy as the whole notion of fried food first thing, it's no different to enjoying a pint or two on the weekend - everything in moderation. Timing is critical here as we greedily have a lot of components to bring together, so put the oven on a low setting to keep the plates and cooked items hot until ready to dish up.
 
3 tblsp vegetable oil, plus 2 tblsp to fry eggs
4 handmade pork or beef sausages
8 rashers of smoked back bacon
4 slices of black or white pudding
75g cooked potato (ideally leftover new potatoes)
2 slices of white bread, plus bread for toast
4 large vine tomatoes
4 large flat or field mushrooms
4 free range eggs
Butter for bread
Home made preserves or marmite
 
Preheat the oven to 125°C/gas mark 1. Place your plates in the oven.

Place a large, heavy frying pan on the stove and heat with 3 tblsp of the oil, until warm. Add the sausages, black pudding and bacon, and cook slowly for 6-8 minutes to release the fat but not brown the meat. Turn up the heat and continue to cook until the bacon begins to crisp and the sausages are brown. Transfer to the warmed plates.

There should be a surplus of fat in the pan, now heat the pan until the fat is letting off a sheen or haze, and add the bread and potato. Cook the bread quickly on one side until golden brown, and then remove and place on a piece of kitchen paper before transferring to the oven. Turn the potato over and cook for 2-3 minutes, then transfer that to the oven as well.

Lower the heat and add the tomatoes, cut-side down, and the mushrooms, stalk up. Season with pepper, then cover. Cook for 5 minutes and keep warm in the pan until required. 

Take a small omelette or frying pan and heat 2 tblsp of oil until hot but not smoking. Break the eggs into a breakfast cup and carefully tip into the pan. The egg, if fresh, should “sit up” and not spread all over the pan. Cook until the white of the egg is completely set and firm, and transfer immediately to a warmed plate. Add all the other components and serve immediately.

Post nightshift breakfast blt

Serves 1 seriously tired chef  

You can vary the ingredients of this sandwich to taste. For example, you could add sliced buffalo mozzarella, sliced avocado or roasted and peeled red pepper quarters, all the above quite depending on your mood. Alas and quite frankly, after pulling a 16 hour overnight shift in the kitchen, you're lucky the bacon is even cooked.

Tabasco to taste (optional)

6 slices unsmoked back bacon

2 soft floury rolls

Butter or mayonnaise

2 fat ripe tomatoes, sliced

A handful of baby gem leaves

Preheat a nonstick frying pan over a medium-high heat. Trim the bacon of excess fat. Once the pan is hot, add 1 tblsp oil, followed by as much bacon as you can fit in the pan. Fry briskly for about 2 minutes on each side or until lightly coloured and beginning to turn crispy. The cooking time will vary according to the thickness of the bacon. Remove from the pan and keep warm in the oven while you continue to cook the remaining bacon with a further tablespoon of oil. 

Lightly spread the bottom half of each roll with butter or mayonnaise and cover with the sliced and seasoned tomatoes, then 3 slices of bacon followed by the gem leaves. A hit of tabasco at this stage isn't necessarily a bad thing by the way, as is a twist of black pepper.

Serve immediately, with plenty of paper napkins and an appropriate beverage for the time of day.

Sardines for breakfast?

The poor man’s fish has never been more fashionable. I've seen it most recently gracing some of our very 'best' restaurants, and is as popular as it rightly should be. In mainland europe, the freshest, locally caught sardines have always been treated as a delicacy, and more often than not are at their best simply grilled or barbecued.


This said, the oily strength of the fresh sardine can cope with an abundance of amazing flavours. They can be fantastic marinated and can stand up to strong spices. They can also happily take sour and acidity which counters the oiliness of the sardines.


I was involved in a decent conversations with one of my closest ever friends a couple of days ago regarding his new menus for a restaurant opening he is in the final stages of. We were poring over his breakfast menus and racking our brains for something a little different but a bit of fun too.


We started talking about tinned pilchards in tomato sauce on toast, which evidently is a comfort snack to more than you'd imagine, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with tinned sardines on toast for a quick lunch on the hop. But I think we're going to look into putting freshly roasted sardines and slow roasted tomatoes with a hint of thyme and rosemary on top of griddled slices of ciabatta, and see where this takes us.

Something along these lines...which should be enough for 4

Breakfast sardines and tomatoes on ciabatta with parsley, thyme and rosemary

8 sardines, scaled and gutted
250g ripe tomatoes, cut into small wedges
Rock salt and freshly ground black pepper
A fist of flat parsley, ripped

3 sprigs thyme, leaves ripped off
1 sprig of rosemary, needles picked
Olive oil, for drizzling and brushing
4 thick or 8 thin slices of ciabatta
A handful of fresh greens such as peashoots


Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Lay the sardines and tomatoes in a roasting tray; season with rock salt and freshly ground pepper. Scatter the parsley, thyme and rosemary over the sardines and tomatoes. Drizzle with olive oil, toss to coat, then roast for 10 minutes or until the sardines are just cooked.


Heat a griddle pan until almost smoking. Brush the ciabatta lightly with olive oil then season with salt and pepper. Griddle on both sides until toasted and slightly charred.


Divide the ciabatta between plates; place the roasted tomatoes on top. Slice the heads off the sardines; serve whole or filleted on top of the tomatoes. Spoon over the pan juices and sprinkle a pinch of greenery and serve immediately. A good cup of tea and the morning's papers essential.

Easy start to Sunday

There's nothing quite like an easy start to Sunday, whether it's to recover from the previous evening's frivolities or to prepare for the family to descend for lunch.  Breakfast is traditionally the most important meal of the day, but the luxury of a lazy breakfast at the weekends, means it often turns into brunch.  

So, if you can't decide whether it's a late breakfast or an early lunch your taste buds are craving opt for something that will cover both.  

Eggs, a staple breakfast component for centuries, have had their fair share of bad publicity, but I've yet to truly believe that they can be anything but goodness.  They bring life to food, get you started for the day, and feed both the brain and the soul.  As long as you have half a dozen eggs in your store cupboard and a decent frying pan you'll always have brunch, and any added extras are just a bonus.

Scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and bagels

Serves 2-3

6 large free range eggs
25g ice cold butter, cut into small dice
1 tblsp crème fraîche
freshly ground sea salt and pepper
Few chives, snipped
2-3 bagels of your choice, toasted

400g smoked salmon slices

Break the eggs into a cold, heavy-based pan, place on the lowest heat possible, and add half the butter. Using a spatula, stir the eggs frequently to combine the yolks with the whites.

As the mixture begins to set, add the remaining butter. The eggs will take about 4-5 minutes to scramble – they should still be soft and quite lumpy. Don’t let them get too hot – keep moving the pan off and back on the heat.

Meanwhile, toast the bagels.

Add the crème fraîche and season the eggs at the last minute, then add the snipped chives. Put the split bagels on warm plates, pile the softly scrambled eggs on top, fold over the smoked salmon and serve immediately.

Manakeesh

Having just come back from the most amazing weekend in Beirut, I can now safely say that a properly made manakeesh for breakfast is one of the true culinary finds I've made this year. If you don’t have time to make your own bread, I guess you can use a pita instead, but trust me on this one, if close to perfection is sought, you might as well gloss over this recipe and plan your next holiday in Lebanon, the only way to do this kind of food justice is to go to the source.

250g all purpose flour
20g fresh yeast or 2 tsp dry yeast
2 tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
about 125ml warm water
2 tblsp olive oil

In a large non-metal bowl, mix together the flour and salt. Form the mixture into a mound and create a well in the centre. Pour the warm water and sugar into a bowl and when the sugar has dissolved, crumble in the yeast.

When the yeast is frothy, pour it into the well in the flour. Mix it together with your hands or a wooden spoon. You’ll end up with a dry, crumbling mixture that isn’t much like dough. Cover and set aside in a warm place for 10 minutes.

Now add 2 tblsp olive oil and knead it into the dough. Add a little more warm water and knead it in to create a more dough like consistency. You’re done when the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl.

Form the dough into a ball, place in a lightly greased bowl and turn it over again to make sure the top is greased. Cover and leave in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.

When the dough has risen, turn in out onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently until the dough becomes firm again. Now you’ll need to decide whether you want one big manakeesh or several small ones. Take the amount of dough you want (a small section or the whole thing), and roll it out with a rolling pin until it’s a little less than half an inch (about half a centimeter) thick. Move the dough rounds to a lightly greased baking sheet and pinch all the way around the edges to form a raised edge.

Now add your toppings, place in an oven pre-heated to 200c and bake for barely a few minutes.

Manakeesh toppings should be applied fairly thinly, for an authentic taste, don’t pile them on thick.

Olive oil and za’atar. Spread a thin coating of olive oil over the top of the bread and then spread on a layer of za’atar.

Cheese - jibne and akkawi or ricotta will work fine. Avoid Greek feta, though, as it tends to be too salty. Another option is to spread on some labneh after baking, while the bread is still warm.

Vegetables - a mixture of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, and olives.

Minced lamb - sauté the lamb in vegetable oil until lightly browned, then add finely chopped tomato, along with pepper and parsley if you like, spread it on the bread, and pop it in the oven.

Scrambled eggs with Spanish style hash

Serves 4

This morning, officially, I could murder a fry up... not enough carbohydrates and sleep combined with a little too much booze and vocal strain always make for some form of a frying pan moment the day after. If someone else were cooking then it'd be rude not to insist on the works, but seeing as that luxury isn't coming my way, I reckon keeping it simple while maintaining maximum punch is the way ahead. A small dice of pan-roasted potatoes are a great accompaniment to scrambled eggs. The secret is to get the potatoes nicely golden and to take the pan off the heat just before the eggs are completely set – there is nothing worse than overcooked, rubbery eggs - there are so many things wrong about that I'm not so sure I have the energy to get into it this morning...

2 large waxy potatoes (about 600g)

Olive oil, for cooking

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 red chilli, seeded and finely sliced

8 large eggs

Handful of fresh chives, finely snipped

Peel and chop the potatoes into 1cm cubes. Pat dry with kitchen paper to remove some of the excess starch.

Heat a thin layer of olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan and add the potatoes with a pinch of salt and pepper. (You may need to cook the potatoes in two batches if your pan is not large enough.) Fry the potatoes, tossing or turning occasionally, until just tender and evenly golden brown on all sides. This may take up to 15-20 minutes over a medium-to-low heat.

Add a touch more oil and toss in the sliced chilli. Cook for a minute or two. Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl and pour into the pan. Stir the mixture as the eggs cook and begin to set at the bottom of the pan. Just before the eggs are completely set, remove the pan from the heat, stir in the snipped chives and season to taste.

Divide between warmed plates and serve immediately with a mountain of hot buttered toast and a mug (I insist it must be a mug) of hot tea.