Category: 2.2 Breakfast

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Fat Boys Breakfast

The cooked breakfast – ‘fat boys’ to me – is, as they say, a moveable feast. There are endless combinations and every part of the UK claims it’s own variation. The key to cooking it is:

  1. One frying pan for every two people if you want everyone to be served at once
  2. Work out a cooking order so you can keep everything that keeps warm without spoiling the flavour in the oven, and always the potato scone last immediately after the eggs.

Cook: 15min

Mini-fat boys, with room in the middle for sauce.

Ingredients (all optional per person)

75g Mushrooms cut into pieces

1/2 tin baked beans

1 slice toast, buttered

2 rashers back bacon unsmoked

1 pork sausage (I use chipolata)

1 lorne (square) sausage

1 slice black pudding

1 potato scone

1 slice white pudding

1 round of haggis

1 egg

Method

  1. warm a large heavy metal dish in the oven (about 60c fan) and warm the plates. If you are cooking for 1 or 2, just warm the plates in a proving oven and serve onto them as you go.
  2. Heat veg oil (1tblspn) in a frying pan (7/10 induction), add the mushrooms. If you want the extra washing up you can cook them separately in butter.
  3. Add the pork sausage to start cooking and after 4 min add the black/white pudding, haggis and lorne sausage.
  4. Turn everything after about 2 min,
  5. Put the bread on to toast. Start the beans on a lowish (4/10) heat.
  6. After 2 min put the mushrooms onto a paper towel to remove the excess oil, move everything else into the oven, then the mushrooms once they’ve drained.
  7. Cook the bacon, with the thin end towards the middle of the pan – where it will crisp better. This will take about 90sec, more if the bacon gives up brine in the pan.
  8. Turn the pan down to 6, move the bacon into the oven.
  9. Add more oil to the pan and then the eggs. While they are cooking butter the toast. Use a spatula to coat the eggs and cook the top (removing any wobbly white).
  10. When the eggs are almost done start serving, and if there is room in the pan add the potato scones. The potato scones only take 30 sec each side and they do soak up oil, I dish up the eggs then turn the scones, and finish dishing everything else up before the scone, which I put on a paper towel for a few seconds first.

Okay so it sounds rushed, stressy and complicated – it’s not. After a couple of goes you get a real sense of the rhythm and timings, and it’s just a simple organised thing that always wins big brownie points for the day ahead.

For me a fat boys is best the morning after a hard physical day, when you know you’ll have an hour or two to let it go down and your muscles are gently aching from the day before.

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Scrambled Eggs

simple and tasty

Scrambled eggs are a simple hearty breakfast – the recipes isn’t difficult but it’s worth writing down…

Cooking: 3 min

Ingredients

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp butter
  • 1 tsp Philadelphia soft cheese (optional)
  • 3 chives chopped

Method

The key to great scrambled eggs is to cook them slowly. So

  1. Beat the eggs, add a pinch of salt and a grind of fresh black pepper
  2. heat a good non-stick frying pan with the butter in it, slowly melting the butter (5/10 on my induction hob)
  3. When the butter is melted add the soft cheese and let it soften, swirl it though the butter then add the eggs.
  4. Leave it alone for a minute then stir, then leave it alone for 30 sec and stir. You’re waiting until the egg starts to cook. Keep gently stirring every 15 seconds or so until the egg is cooking quickly, then break it up with the spatula and just before it’s cooked enough – turn it off.
  5. You can then use the residual heat to get the perfect consistency, serve and sprinkle with fresh chives.

Be gentle – that’s the key, don’t over stir, and let the butter keep a glossy edge to the eggs – they should taste like velvet, but not like mush.