Egg-Topped Fridge Gravel Hash - Brunch with Some Bite!

This little beauty is a one pan dish cooked in 5 stages. Super easy and very satisfying. With a good punch! P.S. you can make this as spicy or mild as you like. For a vegetarian twist, ditch the bacon and top with salty feta before the egg or even fry up some halloumi instead! For a vegan version you could skip the butter and eggs and instead add some tofu and/or beans to the hash to amp up the protein and top with a rich spicy tomato salsa. Totally adaptable and great for using up leftovers. 

This recipe is totally flexible and can be made with whatever vegetables you have kicking around your fridge even if they’re clearly past their best (aka Fridge Gravel). In my case it was:

A sad looking courgette that was starting to go dimply, chopped

4 spring onions with very floppy green ends, chopped 

A green pepper that had seen better days, chopped 

A couple of rashers of smoked back bacon leftover from the pack after hubby’s bacon sarnie earlier in the week, chopped

3 floury potatoes, skin on and chopped

a fresh-ish jalapeño, with the seeds, chopped

The tail end of some garlic purée

4 eggs that needed to be used today

Extras:

Oil for frying 

Butter also for frying 

Salt and pepper 

Sriracha, to serve

METHOD:

1. add 1tsp oil to a large hot frying pan, add the courgette, peppers, spring onions and jalapeño and gently fry till all the veg is tender and starting to go brown around the edges. Then add a little garlic purée. I don’t add it at the start in case it burns. Cook for a minute and then scrape everything out of the pan into a large bowl for later.
2. Fry the bacon till crispy in the now empty pan. Once cooked, set aside in the bowl with the veggies. Cover with foil to keep everything warm.
3. Add a little more oil to the pan and fry the chopped potatoes, don’t put the heat too high as you want the potatoes cooked through and if the heat is too high, they’ll burn before they’re cooked. If I had a lid for my frying pan I’d use it at this point to keep the heat in the pan, but I don’t so a bit of tin foil draped over the pan did the job just fine. Once the potatoes start to soften in the middle add a teaspoon of butter and stir them up. The butter helps the edges brown and of course adds a buttery flavour.
4. Once the potatoes are golden and crispy, you add the veggies and bacon back to the pan and stir them in to help all the flavours combine. Add a little salt and pepper and and then serve onto the plates and tent them with foil to keep them warm while you fry the eggs.
5. Fry eggs in a little oil and once cooked, serve over the hash filled plates. Then drizzle with sriracha.  TA DA!

Spicy vegetable and bean soup

Totally veggie and if you skip the cheese it’s vegan. 

INGREDIENTS:

1tsp Oil

Onion finely chopped

Carrots finely chopped 

Courgette finely chopped 

1tsp Garlic purée 

1/2 cup frozen sweet corn 

1 can baked beans 

Taco seasoning 

1 jalapeño split and deseeded 

1 can chopped tomatoes 

1 veggie oxo cube

750-1000ml water

Tabasco sauce (to taste)

Few drops of lime juice

Finely chopped coriander (I used frozen)

Salt and pepper 

METHOD:

1) gently fry the onion, courgette and carrots till starting to soften 

2) add the spices and jalapeño stir till the spices start to toast

3) add the garlic purée, sweetcorn, baked beans with sauce, and tinned tomatoes.

4) add the stock cube and water, salt and pepper, Tabasco, lime juice and coriander then bring to a boil and simmer for 15-20 mins. 

5) serve with toppings of your choice. 

Spiced Beef Hotdish with jalapeño and cheddar cornbread dumplings

 Spiced Beef Hotdish with jalapeño and cheddar cornbread dumplings:

INGREDIENTS:

For the Spiced Beef Hotdish:

Stewing beef

1 Onion, chopped 

2 Carrots, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced

2 fresh jalapeños deseeded and finely chopped

1/2 cup Sultanas

1 tin Kidney beans, drained

1 tin Cannelini beans, drained

Tin chopped tomatoes 

Beef stock cube

1 cup water

1tbsp Baharat spice blend

For the Cornbread Dumplings:

Dry ingredients:

1 cup plain flour

1 cup fine cornmeal 

1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp baking powder

Salt and pepper 

Flavour:

1-2 jalapeños deseeded and finely chopped

1/2 cup grated cheddar

Wet ingredients:

115g melted butter

2 medium eggs

1 cup Greek yogurt 

METHOD:

1. For the Spiced Beef Hotdish, chuck everything into a slow cooker and cook on low for 8hrs.
2. Preheat the oven to 180*C
3. While the oven is heating up make the cornmeal dumplings.
4. Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix up.
5. Add the flavour ingredients but reserve a little of the cheese to sprinkle on top.
6. Mix the flavour ingredients in so they’re well distributed. The flour coating these will help to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the mixture in the oven.
7. Add the wet ingredients and mix till just combined.
8. Transfer the stew from the slow cooker to a large ovenproof dish, and top with scoops of the cornbread mixture. 
9. Sprinkle over the remaining cheese.
10. Bake for 20 mins till the cornbread is fluffy inside and crispy and golden outside. 

Super-sized, super cheesy, cheese scones

So I was about to start baking and hubby says: “if you’re doing cheese scones can you do me at least one big one? Sorry just not a fan of the little ones you’ve made recently.”

So what’s a girl to do in response to that...?!

Well basically...THIS! 

I make cheese scones fairly regularly but these are my best yet. Quite a few little additions but I really turned the volume up flavour-wise.  It’s a scaled up variation on a basic recipe from the Be-Ro book but with Some extras to bring out the flavour in the cheese. 

INGREDIENTS:

700g self-raising flour 

1/2tsp salt

1/2tsp white pepper 

1/2tsp onion granules

1tsp dried thyme 

1/2tsp smoked paprika 

1/4tsp freshly grated nutmeg

100g butter/margarine 

300g grated Red Leicester

6 eggs beaten

180ml milk

Topping:

1 egg beaten with 60ml milk

100g grated Red Leicester 

METHOD:

1) Pre-heat oven roasted 200*C

2) thoroughly mix the seasoning ingredients with the flour so all the flavours are well distributed throughout 

3) rub the butter into the flour

4) add the 300g cheese and mix in well 

5) beat the eggs and milk together and add to the dry ingredients and mix well to bring together as a slightly sticky dough. Try not to overwork the mixture otherwise you’ll get tough scones 

TIP: add the egg and milk mixture a bit at a time as you mix it into the flour mixture. The original recipe used only 4 eggs but I couldn’t get it to come together with that as it was far too dry so add the wet mix as needed rather than all in one go. 

6) turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface or one lined with clingfilm (which is my preference, less messy and avoids adding more flour making the mixture too dry) 

7) gently roll out the mixture to around 2-3cm thick then cut out circles using a lightly floured cutter and place onto a lined baking tray

8) brush the tops of the scones with the remaining egg and milk mixture then top with grated cheese from the 100g

9) bake for 13-15 minutes till they’ve risen slightly and the cheese is melted and golden 

10) Cool on a wire rack or enjoy them still warm from the oven. Serve with butter

Peanut butter and jam cookies

 Makes 16 enormous cookies

• 185 g Plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 125 g softened butter 
• 200 g smooth peanut butter
• 185 g brown sugar
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 egg
• 100 g jam

1) pre-heat the oven to 180*C

2) beat butter, peanut butter and sugar together till fluffy

3) add the egg, milk and vanilla and mix in

4) add the flour and baking powder and mix in

5) use an ice cream/mashed potato scoop to put scoops of the mixture onto lined baking trays. Make sure to leave plenty of space around each one as they’ll spread slightly when cooking

6) dip a teaspoon measuring spoon into cold water and use the back of it to make a little divot in the middle of each cookie -wetting the spoon again after each one. The water on the spoon stops it from sticking 

7) add a teaspoon of jam to the dip you’ve created. 

8) bake for 10-12 mins or till light golden brown 

9) cool for a couple of minutes on the tray before transferring to a wire rack to cool fully

Spiced Cranberry and Orange Muffins

 Spiced Cranberry and Orange Muffins

Makes 20-24 muffins! 

Well it’s September so that means Autumn is upon us. A fact I am far too excited about! My favourite season by far, leaves turning the most amazing colours, bright crisp mornings, Bonfire Night and Halloween, toffee apples, or just apples and pears in season, cosy comfort food and snuggly nights in watching the wind and rain from indoors. Okay okay...I’ll stop! 

One of my favourite autumnal flavour combos for sweet baking is orange and cranberry with sweet warming spices so I decided to knock up some muffins with those flavours.  They do not disappoint if I do say so myself. 

This recipe uses orange zest and juice but I didn’t have an orange so I substituted it for the zest and juice of two lovely sweet satsumas/easy-peelers just be careful when grating the zest not to rip the whole skin off. 

Ingredients:

100g dried cranberries 

Zest and juice of a large orange/2 satsumas etc.

2 eggs

125ml oil (not extra virgin olive oil as it’s too strong flavoured)

250ml milk

125g caster sugar and 125g soft brown sugar (or just 250g caster sugar, the brown sugar just adds a caramel note)

400g self raising flour

Pinch salt

1.5 tsp ground cinnamon 

0.5 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Method:

In a little bowl, soak the cranberries in the orange zest and juice while you do the rest of the recipe. It just helps them to plump up a little and they absorb a little of the citrus flavour and become like little fruity bombs in the muffins. 

Preheat the oven to 180*C fan

Break the two eggs into a large bowl/bowl of a stand mixer and whisk on high speed for one minute till they are full of bubbles and fluffy.

Add the oil and milk and whisk till combined. 

Then add the sugar and whisk again till the mixture is smooth.

Add the flour, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and mix in till just mixed.

Add the cranberries, zest and orange juice. Whisk in briefly till it’s just mixed.

Scoop into paper cases in a muffin tin.

Bake for 15-20 mins till a skewer/cocktail stick comes out clean.

Allow to cool in the tin for 10 mins then turn out onto a wire rack to fully cool.

TIP: For a crispy top you could add a teaspoon of Demerara sugar to the top of each muffin right before they go in the oven. Or you can ice them with a drizzle icing which is just a mixture of icing sugar and orange juice and zest. 

Spicy Egg Parcel (breakfast/brunch/lunch/dinner/midnight munchies!) (V)

 Spicy Crispy Egg Parcel (breakfast/brunch/lunch/dinner/midnight munchies!) 

Serves 1

Vegetarian 

I promise these look trickier than they are to make. Also, nice to have a veggie cooked breakfast to draw on especially if you’ve got lovely vegetarians in your life. 

Looking in the fridge today trying to decide what on earth I wanted for breakfast/lunch and just started grabbing stuff and decided to just play and see what I could come up with. Pretty chuffed with the eventual product. I’d say it was a successful experiment! 

INGREDIENTS:

1tsp max cooking oil

1/4 diced red pepper 

1 chopped spring onion

3 medium eggs beaten

Pinch each of smoked paprika, dried chilli flakes, dried oregano, salt and pepper 

40g finely grated cheese (I used Red Leicester)

Wheat flour tortilla wrap 

Sriracha (to your taste)

Non stick pan

Greaseproof/baking paper

METHOD:

Fry off a little diced red pepper and chopped spring onions in very very little oil (if you use too much you risk being burned later) in a good non stick frying pan. Meanwhile beat 3 eggs and add a pinch each of smoked paprika, dried chilli flakes and dried oregano, salt and pepper, mix up and pour the eggs over the veggies and tilt the pan so the whole base of the pan is coated in egg, sprinkle over about half the grated cheese and once the eggs look about half cooked, lay on a tortilla wrap. Press down gently so the Runny egg and melty cheese sticks to the wrap. When you can jiggle the pan and the egg slides around you know it’s cooked enough to do this next bit. TURN OF THE HEAT! We don’t want anyone starting fires. Lay a piece of greaseproof paper over the top of the pan and put a plate face down on the paper. Can you see where this is going??? This is why it was important not to use too much oil! Keeping a hand firmly on the plate, invert the pan so the egg and wrap are now sitting on the plate and greaseproof. Put the plate to one side for a moment and put the pan back on the heat. Add a little sprinkle of cheese directly into the pan, and slide the wrap and egg back into the pan, wrap side down, this way you’ll get really crispy cheesiness on the outside of the parcel. Then sprinkle a little more cheese on the egg, fold up the sides of the wrap with a spatula/fish slice. And cook, turning every now and again until the tortilla wrap and the cheese that’s stuck to the outside of it, is crispy and golden. Serve with a drizzle of sriracha. 

You could add any veg you like to this but just make sure it’s not too veg-heavy or the egg won’t hold together and go crispy and you’ll end up with a soggy wrap. A bit of bacon or cooked chicken would be nice in this too but I was working with what we had and sometimes I just fancy meat free. 

I can imagine this being really nice late night after you’ve been out for a few drinks but you MUST remember the two key safety steps:

!! Use hardly any oil or you’ll get scalded!!

!! Turn off the heat before placing the greaseproof on top of the pan or you’ll start a fire!!