le pain grillé français

Enough for three?

3 large eggs, a splash of milk, a knob of buttery substance, oil, rough cut whole meal bread (7 - 8 pieces), seasoning to taste.

Break the eggs into a pasta plate, mix with milk, add seasoning. Heat oil/butter in a frying pan. Dip the bread in the egg mix, two slices at a time and allow a little time to soak. Turn the bread over (more soaking up etc.) then using a fish slice drop the two slices into the hot oil. Sear each side and allow to brown. Serve with bacon, HP Sauce and whatever else you like for breakfast.

Alternatively once cooked you can dust the pieces with icing sugar and serve with jam or syrup.

High And Mighty

I'd never cooked roast pork or ham before so I saw mealtime on January the 1st as providing the perfect challenge. There is of course a lot of information and recipes out on the web, an easy google if you're new to this, pots of good advice from the old hands and experts.  Here's a Delia link that describes the mustard and sugar coated ham I prepared (on the right in the photo), it work surprisingly well. My main problem was understanding quite what kind of ham joint I had in the first place. I bought if from the (local) Hopetoun Farm Shop and despite having a conversation across the counter with the helpful butcher I failed to ask the correct questions. I was therefore unsure about how much of a soaking to give it, whether there was skin or fat and (oops!) how heavy it was. I therefore did what I usually do under these circumstances and hoped for the best and just did everything - strangely that seemed to work. Here's another recipe link, just to maintain a balance.

The pork (left) was much more straightforward, bought from Tesco with the minimum of human interaction there were instructions on the inner label (in a tiny font) that worked. I also knew the weight so it was simply a matter of rubbing in some rock salt and then roasting. I did both joints together at 180 degrees for about 2 hours, I then allowed the ham another 30 minutes at 220 to bake the added mustard glaze. The meat's best left to cool a little before you carve, then just serve warm with a gravy. Delia's further advice also helped.

I made the gravy by adding stock from both joints (they produce a lot) to some ordinary cranberry and sherry sauce I'd bought. I thickened it a little and hey presto, nice brownish colour too.  It was served with roast, mashed and sweet potatoes and various green veg. More than enough for the six of us in fact we'll be eating the leftovers for the rest of the week. The only mishap was my catastrophic dropping of a full bottle of champagne as the roast was being served. I flooded the dining room and soaked the guests in the process. Ho hum.

Poor Man's Noodles

Some people say that mackerel is a dirty fish, I have no truck with this point of view, apart from the odd thing they might gulp down by mistake they spend their lives drinking good Highland seawater, they're very well hydrated I'm told. I'm also sure that award winning director Hayao Miyazaki who feeds this meal to his animation team on a regular basis would agree, as it was his movie (extra features on the DVD) Spirited Away that brought this magnificent noodle recipe to our shores. So full credit to the undead, the spiritual bath house for the frog people and the flooded path and railway line that leads to the scary witch's house. Special thanks to Chihiro and Haku.

Ingredients for Poor Man's Noodles: Instant noodles - your favourite kind, cooked/canned fish in oil – chopped (mackerel will do but apparently there are many other fish in the sea), an egg, chopped spring onion or other vegetable (optional).

Method: cook the noodles normally, a three minute boil does, add the egg (slowly stir it so it cooks in the noodle's heat), add the chopped fish, simmer for minute. Throw away the spring onions, they'll only give you dodgy breath, drain and serve. Makes a good quick snack or an unconventional winter warmer.

Silver Darlings

Fife's Forgotten Fast Food has been overlooked too long so an revival is due. Here's the easy way to start educating your taste buds in how to savour the staples our forefathers enjoyed (?).

1 pot of roll mop herring from the Hopetoun Farm Shop (drained).

4 small slices of brown wholemeal toast a la Jack Nicholson, Five Easy Pieces.

Thinly spread with salted butter.

Combine.

Add a lot of pepper and quaff a glass of dry white wine.

yum

Japanese Lunch Boxes

Ok, these are not recipes at all, they're lunch boxes but kids lunch boxes as they are designed and prepared in Japan. Put simply these are weird, brilliant, inspirational and disturbing all at the same time. If you want to see more (and there are plenty) it's an easy google. Can it happen here?

Tank Commander Pasta

Bill of material: Kraft CP a la Gary, sausage, tomato, seasoning, cheese. Time to cook? 30 mins all in.

Based around the 67p classic Kraft pasta you know and love. Make it up according to the eighteen key words on the box. At the final sauce stage add a chopped up smoked sausage (or chorizo if you're flush), allow a bit of the liquid to boil away. Then lay it out mortician style in a Pyrex dish, add a sliced tomato, pepper and cheesy sprinkles according to taste. Bake at 150 for about twenty. Please ignore decoy banana that bombed the photo.

Here's one I ate a part of earlier.

Maple Sweet Potato

If you don't use sweet potatoes then you should, easy to use (apart from the peeling) and versatile. Here's the deal:

A dish (6 -8) Sweet Potatoes, maple syrup, seasoning, oil, garlic and chili peppers.

Peel the veg, lay in a dish, add a drop or two oil and the rest, drizzle with a decent MS and bake at about 180 degrees for 25 minutes. Mmmm.

Scottish Eggs

N.B these are baked and not deep fried therefore very healthy and nutritious. Above is an actual photo.

You need 6 eggs, 14oz sausage meat, breadcrumbs and a 7th egg that has been beaten.

Hard boil the eggs, shell them and wrap them in sausage meat (a sixth per egg), quite a fiddly process but satisfying. Dip them one by one into the beaten egg and roll them in a decent amount of breadcrumbs. Wash your mucky paws now. Place on a baking tray and bake in a PRE-HEATED oven at 190 C or gas 5 until brown - about 30 minutes.

To spice up a little add pepper or chili sauce or some other tasty stuff to the meat. Mmmm.

Abercorn Roast Chicken.

OK, not a recipe, more like advice: Roasting a chicken in a bag is far easier than roasting a chicken in tin foil. Of course the tin foil saves the chicken from alien mind control and cosmic rays but it can be tricky to handle in the “ouch, feckin' ouch!” moment when you try to remove the hot fowl from the roasting tray. The bag is made of some even more magical material than aluminium, this stuff breathes and blows up like a balloon or a steam engine but curiously it lets out grease, gunge and juices at the same time. I can't really explain it, it's as unfathomable as the depths of Radio 6 or the backwards meaning of the Times editorial June 4^th. The bags have a secret nylon wrap, born from that strange sexually ambivalent moment that occurred when New York met London on a moonlit night in the thirties whilst under the influence of champagne in a world that was not as free as it considered itself to be. To purchase said containers means a trip to some Tesco emporium, 50p for two, hardly rocket science prices.

Serve with family, baked spuds, corn, creamed neeps and carrot, works for me.

Erin's fridge cake

An early part of the process, details to follow.