Roasted Sprouts & Bacon with Mashed Cauliflower, Feta & Soured Cream

Really two meals combined ...

Roasted Sprouts & Bacon

Oven on at 180C.

Par-boil some Brussels sprouts, half and drop into a roasting tray with shredded fatty bacon and a few cloves of garlic.

Omit the bacon and add in some coconut oil or olive oil for a vegetarian alternative.

Commit to the oven for about half an hour.

Mashed Cauliflower, Feta & Soured Cream

Steam some cauliflower and crush with feta cheese and soured cream.

Serve

Roasted sprouts down first, cauliflower over and a good knob of butter on top, shredded spring onions to garnish.

Mega-Baked Sweet Potato

Tuesday. Fencing night, and I need something light, fulfilling, fast energy, slow energy and protein.

What better than a sweet potato?

What better? Sweet potato loaded with goodies!

Go mad ...

Sweet Potato

Spike all over, cut in half and commit to the oven face down on an ovenproof plate for half an hour, or so.

Once soft inside, retrieve and crush up the insides pushing in a good slab of butter.

Goodies

I emptied the fridge ...

• Spinach softened in a little butter
• Boiled egg, sliced
• Bacon, shredded and fried off
• Cucumber and tomato sliced into matchsticks
• Avocado, halved and sliced
• Cottage Cheese (single ingredient)
• Chives
• Splash of Tabasco all over (the food)

Two forks, one in each hand ... wolf it down!

Now, off to stab friends in the chest for the evening ...

Liver, Onion, Bacon & Mushroom Salad with Waffle Crisps

Breakfast ... and just starting to get back to normality after the Christmas break and a first week back at work.

I've been shopping, so we have a fresh haul of food in and what better than a hearty breakfast to start the weekend?

Liver, bacon, onion, mushrooms and tomato over a leafy salad with pickled chillies, paprika, black pepper and Icelandic ash salt.

There's a waffle in there, too! Bird's Eye brand.

Potato waffles are pretty much just starch, in fact, the ingredients list as: Potato, Vegetable Oil, Potato Granules, Potato Starch, White Pepper, Salt & Stabiliser (E464).

So, pretty much all potato, no sugar, which is rare for processed foods and the role of E464 prevents the potato from being saturated with vegetable oil.  In fact, the vegetable oil is probably the only "bad" thing in there ...

... but let's just read a little more about E464.

From Wikipedia: "Use in whole grain breads Agricultural Research Service scientists are investigating using the plant-derived HPMC as a substitute for gluten in making all oat and other grain breads. Gluten, which is present in wheat, rye and barley is absent (or present only in trace quantities) in oat and other grains. Like gluten, HPMC can trap air bubbles formed by the yeast in bread dough, causing the bread to rise. Although it has not been widely studied, it is predicted that whole grain breads made with HPMC will have cholesterol-lowering effects."

Okay, so a gluten alternative ... akin to xanthan gum, or other such stabilisers?

I'm waffling on a bit here, but wanted to investigate these fully. Processed food? Yes, but "sometimes it is better to eat the wrong food with the right attitude than the other way around" Chris Kressler.

I'm not making excuses and certainly not trying to squeeze this in as "paleo" in the way that you see "Paleo Cookies" and so on. The paleo template is large enough an hegemony for each person to take as far as the want to, personally.

If this is a step too far ... don't! Leave it off the plate, but if you want some potato in there, simply slices of sautéed potato will do perfectly.

Let's get cooking ...

Grill the waffle. It wants to become crispy.

In a large skillet, fry off the bacon and once cooked through, toss in some shredded onion and cook through.

Pull to the side of the skillet while you soften some butter in the cleared space and fry off pieces of liver.

While one side is frying, pop a few mushrooms in cap side down. These will cook through and soften.

Retrieve the mushrooms, slicing into quarters and return to the pan on top of the onion and bacon mound. Flip the liver and cook on with half a tomato, fleshy side down also just taking on a little colour and warming through.

Retrieve the tomato, quarter and return to the skillet, folding all the food together.

Serve out over a handful of salad leaves, pepped up with a little black pepper, paprika and Icelandic ash salt (sea salt will do fine); cut the waffle through the middle to make two thin waffles, then corner to corner giving four crisps. Push into the dish.

Brown Sauce over, you've got breakfast. Gorgeous!

Carborama!

Carborama! Yes, Carbonara, but not the usual ancestral style seeking a low-carb version – this is the carb version and a direct replacement, if you like, to regular wheat pasta Carbonara.

Paleo is becoming less carb-phobic and a real eye-opener can be had by reading the Jaminet's book 'The Perfect Health Diet'. On active days, energy from carbohydrate is perfectly acceptable.

Excited by finding some good rice noodles in my local supermarket, I had a play with them a few days ago and at the time, we both remarked that it would be fun to try them as a Carbonara.

So, here it is ...

Carbonara is an Italian pasta-based dish with an egg and cheese sauce. The cheese is usually parmesan or pecorino, both hard and give a salty taste to the dish.  The filler often comes in the form of pancetta, lardons, bacon and sometimes veggies. The meat and veggies are cooked in a heavy-based pan while the pasta is boiled alongside. The pasta, once cooked, is added to the meat and veggies, heat switched off and the egg sauce poured over to be cooked through in the residual heat.

The prep is minimal and the cooking time, for this, much shorter than when using wheat pasta. Five minutes of prep and five to cook should be about right. Quick and easy!

Debate

Even with the conventional version, there is some debate around the sauce as to whether whole eggs should be used or just the yolks. Even recipes where all the egg is used, a further yolk is often added for that gorgeous creaminess which brings us to the second debate which is around the inclusion of cream. To cream or not to cream; that is the question ...

Fatty dairy is perfectly acceptable to a Paleo+er and a Perfect Health Dieter, as is cheese. Let’s make the luxury version.

Carbonara Sauce

Grated manchego, a Spanish sheep cheese not dissimilar to pecorino, a couple of eggs, whole and no further yolk since our eggs do have large yolks, and finally, a good splash of double cream, a slightly fattier cream compared to heavy cream which folks from the US might be more used to.

So, that’s your sauce:  cheese, eggs and cream.

How much? Well, I don't weigh or measure, but once stirred together there was probably about half a pint of the raw sauce. Weights and measures really are not essential; grate what you think is a sufficient amount of cheese on a fine grater and then crack in an egg, stir, crack in another until you've got a slurry. Splash of cream if you like and that's your sauce.

Meat & Veg

Your filler can be anything, even seafood - prawns work well. I went with bacon, mushrooms and asparagus for me. In a heavy-based pan just fry off the bacon, add in a little lard, fry off the mushrooms and last, add in the asparagus to warm through. Lower the heat to keep warm.

Tagliatelle

Meanwhile, cook the noodles. Mine need three minutes in boiling water and should then be drained. I simply switched the heat under my pan with the meat and veggies off and lifted the noodles straight out of the water and into the skillet. The small amount of water that the noodles bring is no big deal.

Combine

Pour the sauce in and fold through thoroughly until the cheese has melted and the eggs cooked through in the residual heat. That is important, since direct heat will scramble the eggs. Still edible, but not especially palatable.

Serve

Serve the dish out immediately from the pan and get stuck in!

Resources

http://perfecthealthdiet.com/the-diet/

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As an interesting observation, I ate this a good couple of hours prior to an evening of sports fencing after which I noted that I had not drunk as much water as I usually do and did not suffer that transient lag that I usually do after about an hour of activity.

Bacon Wrapped Salmon

Fancy a quick meal? Fire up your oven to 180C (350F?) ...

I've made this before using pancetta, but this time: bacon. Served with some leaves, asparagus and a few potatoes, you can get this lot from ingredients to a meal on a plate in about 20 minutes.

First, wrap a piece of bacon around your salmon fillets. Commit to the oven - this will need 20 minutes.

Next, get your veggies boiling, steaming or whatever it is you do with the veggies you've picked. I went with asparagus and potatoes; so, potatoes in to boil (15 minutes) and asparagus on top to steam (for the last few minutes).

Meanwhile, dress a plate with some salad leaves, drop on a few capers, a few slivers of pickled garlic and a good slosh of olive oil.

Everything cooked?

Plate up ...

Asparagus down, salmon on top and potatoes alongside.

Breakfast Bacon ... Two Ways

Bacon. It's gorgeous!

I love the fatty bacon. Streaky and unsmoked. Outdoor reared and unfettled.

I don't eat breakfast through the week, but do like a spot of brunch at the weekends ... for which bacon gives me a lovely treat.

I've taken some leave this week to get the house in order (decorating and such like) and so, a good breakfast is in order.

So, a couple of ideas ...

Mushrooms, liver, onions and pickled gherkins - simply fry off the onions to soften in some lard, add in the mushrooms to soak up all the good fat and then toss in some bacon, shredded, and finally some chopped liver - lamb's liver for me. Prior to serving, some chopped pickled gherkins just to cut through. Serve over spinach leaves spiced up with cayenne pepper and black pepper.

How to top that?

Bacon, grilled and layed over spinach again, spiced with cayenne pepper and black pepper. Now, sliced mushrooms fried off in lard. Top that with pickled gherkin and pickled beetroot, garnished with cottage cheese and pea shoots.

Egg. Fried on the first one (not pictured) and boiled with the second (pictured at the top).

Let your imagination go ... empty the fridge onto your plate and breakfast centered around bacon need never be the same again.

Bacon & Mushrooms

... a man cannot live on fish, alone.

I am not dogmatically pesce-paleo. My reason for moving to fish is two-fold: first, simply because I prefer fish, meat, I can take or leave; second, as real food eaters, we often invest so much effort into sourcing well reared meat that we forget the final stage: the slaughter

I don't want to eat badly slaughtered meat.

I got some lovely bacon in from a rare breed farmer, streaky, of course.

Eggs would be great, but I do have some really good chestnut mushrooms in.

Keeping it really simple, the bacon was grilled and the mushrooms fried off in a lard collected from belly pork drippings.

That's it ...

Superfluous pea shoots over for greenage and a good few splashes of Chipotle Tabasco.

Perfect! Even an egg could not make that more perfect.

Power Breakfast!

It doesn't get much better than this!

Liver, onion, bacon, seaweed and a MEGA-egg!

All power foods. Yes, bacon is a superfood ... honest.

Simply fry off some shredded onion in your favourite paleo fat - goose fat, for me.

Add in some reconstituted dried seaweed.

Toss in some lamb's liver and good outdoor reared bacon.

Sprinkle with chilli powder and serve over an egg.

How do you make an egg better? Make a MEGA-egg! Simply crack a fresh egg into collected egg whites (maybe you made some Hollandaise the other day) to make one huge egg.

That's it ... garnish with superfluous greenery if you like, otherwise dig in, be charged up and get about your day.

Keto-breakfasting at its very best!

Bacon & Sweet Potato Rösti

Breakfast!

Rösti is a Swiss potato dish and in its purest for is quite simply grated potato fried in a pan of butter and committed to the oven to cook through.

Rösti can be more broadly defined as a potato dish with the addition of cheese, bacon and onion, and in our case, even more broadly, made from courgette and carrot.

We're going to use sweet potato as the main part, boosted with bacon, flavoured further with daikon, onion and coloured with beetroot.

Grate the sweet potato, daikon and onion, then squeeze all the juice out. Squeeze several times until you are sure you've got all the juice out. Transfer to a large bowl.

Shred some bacon and fry it off. Add to the bowl.

Chop some herbs - chives are good here. Add to the bowl.

Finally, grate some pickled beetroot and carefully add to the bowl.

Salt, pepper ... some melted butter (around three or four tablespoons) and fold together.

Take a skillet (or two, if you're cooking for two), more butter, more than you'd use to fry, and then spoon in the shredded mixture pressing down with a spoon.

Don't worry about it binding - it will, in the pan.

Fry off on one side, flip over and fry the other side. Frying should be about 4-5 minutes each side, then transfer to a pre-heated over (say, 180C?350F?) for a further few minutes ... while you fry off some eggs.

Flip? It's pretty flimsy!

Here's how ...

Slide one out onto a board, holding the empty pan over the second one. Invert. Now, place the empty pan over the board and invert.

I also added some grated cheese once the skillets went into the oven.

Fry off a couple of eggs each and lay over the rösti.

It occurred to me that you could serve in the pan, but on a clean white plate is just as good.

Chilli Prawn Starter

... just a quick and simple starter.

Marinate some prawns in garlic, chilli and coriander with a little lemon juice for an hour, or so.

Fry off a rasher of streaky bacon and cut into the number of prawns.

Place a slice of cucumber or tomato per prawn on a plate, top with bacon, then the prawn, then any leftover marinade and garnish with some herbs.

Done!

Breakfast Paezza!

On the back of junk food for breakfast that we enjoyed last weekend, here's a pizza, of sorts, this week ...

Not strictly a pizza, this is actually a thin frittata dressed as a pizza.

With these kind of meals, it is best to prepare all the ingredients beforehand.

We'll need some grated cheese, shredded bacon and onions, sliced mushroom, slices of tomato and some pepperoni.

First, grate the cheese - a mix of coloured medium and white mature cheddar is always good.

Next, shred some bacon and onions, which should be fried off in a skillet, after which a few thinly sliced mushrooms can be softened, coloured up and cooked through. Set both aside.

Take six eggs - this will make a good base in a 10" skillet. Beat them and pour into the skillet (something like 10" base is good). Here's the technique - keep lifting the cooked egg up and mess it up, mess it around. We're not making scrambled egg, but more like an omelette.

Before the egg has fully cooked through, drop in some of the cheese along with the shredded bacon and onion - this will for a kind of base. Cook on until the cheese begins to melt and the eggs are cooked through.

Remove from the heat - the residual heat in the skillet will harden the base, but we don't want it overdone.

Spread the mushrooms over, then distribute the tomato slices and pepperoni slices around. Yes, pepperoni ain't paleo, but then neither is cultivated vegetables nor domesticated meat ... which, in a roundabout way, I'm saying it doesn't really matter if it's a one off ... call it a cheat or call it just living, you choose.

More cheese over't top, some black pepper and settle it under the grill/broiler to cook the pepperoni through and melt the cheese.

Your paezza is ready! Enjoy! I did ... burp!

Bacon & Egg Umami

I have some egg whites left over from Hollandaise the previous day.

I could do a mega egg, making one giant fried egg with these yolks and cracking one extra egg in for the yolk, or I could just make a large fried egg white.

I'll do that ...

What should go with it? Bacon! Everything is better with bacon.

What else? Tomatoes.

What else? Herbs, chilli and something new.

To work ...

Get the bacon cooking in a skillet - we want it cooked through and all the fat nice and crispy. Cooking for two, I used a couple of slices of streaky bacon.

Once cooked, set aside for a second while the egg is cooked in the grease.

Simply pour the egg whites into the skillet. I had four whites.

Flip over, turn out onto a board to cut. I was using fancy rectangular plates, so the egg was trimmed into a couple of rectangular pieces. Gobble the trimmings down with a little sea salt. Chef's privilege.

Lay that on the plate, thin slices of tomato over, some Tabasco over that, then the bacon, then some chopped chives and ...

Finally, a sprinkling of Laura Sattini's 'Umami Dust'.

Umami Dust? Is that paleo? Probably not, but there's nothing sinister in the ingredients list.

"Designed to turn any savoury dish into a culinary delight, Laura Santtini has released a new powdered version of the original Taste #5 Umami all-natural flavour bomb paste. Taste #5 Umami Dust is made from a combination of everyday Mediterranean ingredients, including natural umami, lemon peels, garlic, balsamic vinegar, anchovies, porcini mushrooms and tomatoes. Unlike many of the other food seasonings on the shelves it does not contain the flavour enhancer monosodium glutamate." foodmasters.co.uk

Voila! Simple starter ... and boy, what a flavour!

Roasted Pancetta Wrapped Salmon

The classic combination of salmon, pancetta, some roasted salad potatoes, green beans and a little side salad. Perfect!

Potatoes? They're not paleo! No, but they're perfectly welcome in the paleo+ world as safe starches and as paleo progresses, many paleo eaters are perfectly happy with some white potato.

Worried about those green beans? Relax, they're more pod than bean, and in season so grab them while they're at their best!

Anything else? Yes, nitrates in the pancetta. Again, relax - your body can happily cope with it. Your body is not a temple! It's a savannah - get out there any enjoy it.

So, to work ...

Oven on. 180C, so 350F-ish?

Get your potatoes par boiling while to do the fiddly bit ...

Take your salmon fillet, skin it if necessary and wrap a piece of pancetta around it. Place it on an ovenproof plate.

Your par-boiled potatoes can now be drained and into the pan, put some butter (or ghee, lard, dripping or  coconut oil), minced garlic and chopped herbs - I went for chive. I also put in a little lemon zest.

Spoon these out onto the same ovenproof plate ensuring that all the butter and herbs are lathered over them.

Grind some black pepper over the salmon and potatoes, squeeze some lemon juice over and pop it in the over for 15-20 minutes until it all starts to brown. No salt - the pancetta has that covered.

That's it!

While it's cooking prepare something green - I went with green beans; tenderstem broccoli, asparagus, spring greens or kale would all be great!

Total time: Under half an hour.
Total effort: Negligible.
Total gain: MAXIMUM!

Cauliflower Cheese

Paleo+ comfort food.

If dairy in the form of cheese and cream is not within your paleo template then move along ... there's plenty more here.

You could, of course, omit the dairy entirely and enjoy some tender steamed vegetables with bacon and shallot, and perhaps a drizzle of avocado oil and some chilli - there's a thought. Maybe next time.

Back to it ... we've a cheese sauce to make and that is something that is not an easy thing to do without flour, cornflour or some other thickener. You could use a starch, like arrowroot, but it tends to make the sauce look slimy.

Here's how ...

Get your vegetables steaming - a whole cauliflower and a whole broccoli taken off the stems is good for two people.

In a skillet, get some shredded bacon slices and shredded shallot warming through and crisping up. I scooped up some really nice outdoor reared, hung and smoked bacon in the end of date section at the supermarket for literally pence! Score!

The sauce ...

Grate about 300g of cheese. We use more cheese than usual here. I used a mature cheddar - full of flavour with a superb tang.

In a small milk pan over a gentle heat, melt some butter. How much? Well, enough. Maybe a half centimetre slice of the end of a stick?

Whisk that together with a little hot water - somewhere between a teaspoon and a tablespoon is fine. You're thinking that fat and water do not mix, but we can emulsify using a whisk. Why? We need a little liquid to go with our double cream, which is next.

Pour in about 100ml of double cream. You might call this heavy cream, depending upon where you live. You may just call it cream.

Stirred into the emulsified butter, you should now have a thinned out cream. This is much better than simply watering down cream and better than using milk.

Finally, dump in the cheese and keeping it low and slow ... just let the cheese melt in. Stir occasionally to ensure that it is not sticking.

Not thick enough? Pop in an egg yolk. Beat in quickly so that it does not scramble. In fact, drop in an egg yolk anyway for a really deep sauce.

Want something really special? Secret ingredient? English Mustard. Stir in a teaspoon of English Mustard and the sauce will pep up and go a gorgeous yellow. It must be English Mustard for the heat and bite - American, French or German will not do since it is too bitter.

So, that's our sauce done, our vegetables steamed and our crunchy topping done.

Spoon out the vegetables into an ovenproof dish, pour over the sauce and sprinkle the bacon and shallot over. Place it under the grill/broiler for a few minutes to really crispen up.

Serve out into wide brimmed bowls with a sprinkle of sea salt and a grind of freshly milled black pepper.

Bangers & Mash [Alternative]

Bangers & Mash is traditional British fair and loved, universally.

Thick sausages, mashed potato, thick herb gravy ... too gorgeous and should really be left alone, but, with a glut of cocktail sausages, a hankering for some bacon and in need of a carb-up, here's a fun alternative.

First, make up a load of "pigs in blankets", then make them angry! Sprinkle some cayenne pepper over. Commit to the oven at 200C/400F for 20 minutes, or so, until crispy.

Boil some potato, sweet potato, swede, any kind of root that takes your fancy and mash with butter. Fold some herbs in - I went for chives.

Steam some cabbage, spring greens, kale, something green that takes your fancy.

Make up a quick gravy from a chicken stock cube and some arrowroot. Chicken stock works well here for a lighter dish.

Plate up ... mound of angry piggies, dollop of mashed roots, handful of steamed greens, gravy alongside.

Dig in!

Bubble & Squeak

Known by many names, from Irish Colcannon, Scots Clapshot, Dutch Stamppot to Hash in the United States, not a million miles away from Hash Browns, Bubble & Squeak is quite probably something you already know how to cook.

Simply combine some mashed potato with some cabbage, form into patties, fry off in some beef dripping and that's about it.

Make up some mashed potato by boiling a good masher, like Maris Piper, until soft, then mash butter into it, finally whipping up a little with a spatula. Get right in there and get a good arm workout!

Some shredded greens, cabbage, kale, whatever ... cool both overnight.

With the cold ingredients, fold together and fold in some chopped spring onions - this is a seasonal Bubble & Squeak with all the ingredients right in season.

If possible, chill again to harden up the patties.

Using a good slice of beef dripping softened in a skillet, gently lay the patties in to fry off. Leave them on one side for a couple of minutes and gently turn over. If need be, transfer to the oven to fully cook through, but I think you'll find this is enough.

Dripping has a high smoke point (something like 280C) and checking the figures on the Rancimat analysis can be continuously fried for something like 40 hours before it becomes oxidised.

Now, that is a fat! That is a fat fit for paleo!

So, what to serve it with? Well, everything is better with bacon and eggs, right?

Fry some bacon, fry or poach an egg, serve together and enjoy!

Spring Frittata

Joy! Spring has sprung!

Not especially full of spring ingredients, but the green vibrancy of our quick breakfast put me in mind of the season and the new life to come.

Frittata is derived from the Italian, "to fry". An egg dish enriched with vegetables and cheese, not dissimilar to a crustless flan. For paleo, the perfect alternative to flan, quiche or even pizza!

Pre-cook some shredded bacon in a frying pan and soften some mushrooms in the remaining fat.

Chop up a couple of chillies, shred some spring onions and grated some cheddar in readiness. Finally, chop up a very generous portion of parsley to garnish.

The trick with frittata is to make an omelette and catch it just in time before it fully cooks through, at which point drop in your filling and top with cheese - these ingredients will meld into the base.

I went with four eggs in an 8" pan for a thinner base. Whisk the eggs with a fork first and pour into a warm frying pan - warm, not too hot. Gently swirl the eggs around until they are mostly cooked through and then drop in the bacon, mushrooms and chillies. Top with cheese and settle it under the grill/broiler for a couple of minutes.

Garnish with lots of parsley and freshly ground black pepper.

Carrot & Coriander Soup

What do you do with a glut of carrots?

You could grate them into salads, juliennes, ribbons, make a rösti, simply boil, cut into sticks ... but if you need to get rid of a lot of carrots which are just starting to turn ... it's soup for the win!

Carrot with coriander is a classic combination, and one which can be lightly spiced for a really delicate flavour.

To work ...

Peel and slice a few carrots - a couple of large ones each, or three smaller ones will do fine portion-wise. I also sliced up some daikon since I had some that needed using up.

Chop an onion and mince a couple of cloves of garlic, toss into the pan and sauté in butter. Add in a good tablespoon of ground coriander and a teaspoon of turmeric to deepen the colour. Add some chilli powder at this point for a little tickle in the end dish.

Pour in a couple of pints of good chicken stock, toss in the carrots, the daikon and then boil until the vegetables are soft, adding in more water if the level drops significantly.

Once the vegetables are soft, hand blend thoroughly.

Adjust the texture by reducing or adding in more water for a good consistency just right between not too thick, not too runny. Too thick and the soup will be erupting and spitting. Too thin and the solids will not hold right in suspension.

Serve out into a wide-brimmed bowl.

I also finely sliced some bacon, spring onions (which are right in season at the moment) and garnished with some micro-garlic cress.

Frizza!

Frizza? Paleo finds pizza via the frittata!

Simply using egg as a base, Frizza can be eaten as per pizza, in slices, so long as it is not too loaded up; as frittata, when well loaded up; keeps well in the fridge for cold leftovers.

Here's how ...

Assemble your constituent ingredients!

I had some shredded lettuce, green pepper, green beans, cucumber, tomato, leek, spring onion and chilli salsa left over, quite a lot of it, which chilled overnight had released a lot of its juice. With the remaining juice squeezed out, this will be the structure of the frittata.

I love mushrooms in omelettes, so slice up and fry off some thinly sliced chestnut mushrooms in pork fat and set aside.

Cheese topping is a must! Grate some cheddar cheese.

What makes everything taste fantastic? Bacon! Shred up some slices of good, fatty streaky bacon, fried off and set aside.

With the bacon grease still in the pan (a 10" skillet), pour in six eggs cracked into a bowl and whisked with a fork to just break the yolks.

Turn the heat down a little - we're not making an omelette or scrambled eggs. Keep lifting the egg mixture and gently moving it around the pan until a good base has started to cook but there is still egg to be cooked through.

Start to load in your ingredients - first, the leftover salsa, which will work with the remaining uncooked egg to produce a good firm base once cooked through.

Cover with the mushrooms, the bacon and the cheese. Add in a little sea salt if you like, perhaps some chillies, chilli powder or sauce, and any other flavours you want at this stage.

Once the base of the Frizza is firm, which will become evident by steam escaping between the Frizza and the pan where you can put a palette knife in just to lift gently, transfer the pan to the grill, broiler or whatever you call your overhead head sauce.

Once the cheese is fully melted, slide out onto a board. Cut into slices and dig in!

Mighty Breakfast Scramble!

It snowed like blazes last night and so a damn good walk in the hills is in order. Nothing like starting the day with something awesome, especially if you want an active day.

Best just grab whatever is to hand and stuff it all in a pan ...

It's pretty much that, but does require a little forethought or it really will be a mess.

Preparation ...

Get some bacon under the grill, set some sausages frying and get some thick slices of mushrooms frying in butter which you prepare the rest.

Halve some small tomatoes, or quarter larger ones, shred a few greens, slice some pickles and chop some herbs - coriander, here. Grate some cheese - cheddar is good.

When the bacon and sausages are done, set them aside. Slice the sausages on the slant. Get some cubed chorizo warming though and pop the tomatoes into the same pan as the mushrooms.

Warm up a heavy bottomed pan and dot the sausages around. Crack in a few eggs and let them start to fry. Arrange the bacon over.

My crappy old heavy based non-stick pan will do for now. I know ... I know ... the horror! Non-stick pans and all, but I can't use cast iron on my ceramic hob.

When the eggs are just about done scatter over the mushrooms and tomato, scatter the chorizo and sprinkle over the chopped greens, pickles, blueberries and finally the grated cheese.

Transfer to the oven to sit under the grill for a short while to keep things warm and melt the cheese.

Garnish with chopped herbs.

Carefully, remembering where the eggs were, lift out good portions onto a plate trying to keep the yolks intact; or just eat straight out of the pan.

Get about your day ...