Courses & dish types
Breakfast recipes
The meal most worth getting right.
Breakfast is the meal with the least time and the most habit, and the recipes here split between the ten-minute ones and the ones made the night before. Eggs dominate for a reason: they are the fastest complete protein in a kitchen, and almost everything that goes wrong with them is heat that is too high. Where a recipe involves a batter or a dough that rests overnight, the timing is written from the evening rather than the morning, because a recipe that starts with a two-hour prove is not a breakfast recipe.
21 recipes
Toasted Honey Granola
An oat and almond granola bound with honey and baked in a slab, so it breaks into proper clusters rather than loose dust.
Soft Scrambled Eggs
Eggs cooked slowly over low heat and stirred constantly, so they set as small soft curds instead of dry rubbery sheets.
Poached Eggs
Eggs slid into barely moving water, with an honest account of what the vinegar and the whirlpool do and do not fix.
Crisp Hash Browns
Grated potato rinsed of its loose starch and wrung genuinely dry, then pressed into hot fat so it fries crisp instead of steaming.
Creamy Oat Porridge
Rolled oats cooked in milk and water and stirred throughout, which draws out the starch that separates creamy from watery.
Classic French Omelette
Three eggs cooked in under a minute in a hot buttered pan, stirred hard then rolled, so the outside stays pale and the centre soft.
Ackee and Saltfish
Salt cod soaked and flaked into sautéed onion and pepper, then folded through ackee at the very last moment so it does not break up.
Zapekanka
Curd cheese baked with semolina, egg and raisins into a light set pudding, eaten warm with soured cream.
Syrniki
Fried curd-cheese fritters made from drained tvorog, crisp at the edge and soft in the middle, eaten with soured cream.
Spanish Potato Tortilla
Potatoes and onion softened slowly in olive oil, then set with beaten egg in a small pan and turned out on a plate to finish.
Smoked Haddock Kedgeree
Smoked haddock poached in milk, the rice then cooked in that same liquid, folded together with boiled eggs and curry spices.
Shakshuka
Eggs poached directly in a spiced tomato and pepper stew, cooked and served in the one pan so the yolks stay hot to the table.
Semolina Kasha
Manka, a milk semolina porridge cooked by raining the grain into moving liquid so that it thickens without lumps.
Sausage and Bacon Breakfast Bap
Sausages cooked slowly from a cold pan, bacon crisped in their fat, and the roll toasted on its cut face so it holds together.
Oladyi
Small thick pancakes raised with kefir and bicarbonate of soda, fried in a shallow film of oil until the edges set crisp.
Mushrooms on Toast
Mushrooms seared hard in a wide pan until they brown, then finished with garlic butter and piled onto thick toast.
French Toast
Thick slices of stale bread soaked in an egg and milk custard, then fried in butter over medium heat so the centre sets without the crust burning.
Cinnamon Bun Concoction
Two tubes of shop-bought cinnamon rolls, cut into pieces and baked in a maple custard. It comes together in ten minutes and feeds a table.
Chicken Congee
Rice simmered in eight times its weight of stock until the grains collapse, into a savoury porridge finished in the bowl.
Buttermilk Pancakes
Thick American-style pancakes raised with buttermilk and bicarbonate of soda, mixed in under a minute so the batter stays lumpy.
Blini
Thin yeasted pancakes of buckwheat and wheat flour, cooked in a hot pan and served with soured cream, butter or salted fish.