Rummaging around on Sunday morning, looking for stuff to eat, I found eggs, onion, chorizo, a couple of cold boiled potatoes, and some leftover pastry that needed eating. Hence; breakfast quiche! (Danielle’s idea, not mine.)

I diced about 60 g of chorizo (it was the uncooked kind), and fried it briefly to release some oil. Added a sliced onion and the potatoes and continued to fry until they’d crisped up a bit. Danielle rolled the pastry out and somehow made it fill our pie dish (if you look closely you’ll see it’s a very thin layer — I don’t know how she managed it!). Poured the potato/chorizo/onion mixture into the pastry base, topped with grated cheese, and poured over four beaten eggs, well seasoned, with a little milk added. Finally, I baked the whole lot for about half an hour at 175 deg C.

Lunch today was caprese grilled cheese sandwiches.

No recipe required, because it’s pretty obvious: cram slices of mozzarella, tomato, and pesto between pieces of bread, brush the outside of the bread with butter or oil, and lightly fry to melt the cheese. I found it worked better if I put a lid on the frying pan to trap more heat in and make sure the cheese was properly melted.

I also made my own pesto for this, because I don’t like pine nuts so pre-made stuff isn’t to my taste. Authenticity demands that pesto is ground by hand in a pestle and mortar, but I’m far too busy and important (read: lazy and inept) for that. Instead, I simply used a small blender to combine a handful of basil leaves, a few table spoons of grated parmesan, a diced clove of garlic, some salt and pepper, and enough decent quality olive oil to give a gloopy consistency. This worked well enough for the sandwiches, though I daresay it’s not the last word in pesto-ness. —Rich

Tex-mex weekend brunch: eggs roasted in sweet pointed peppers, with chilli and freshly made tortilla chips.

Both Danielle and I are pretty lazy and slow-moving on weekend mornings, so it’s usually 11 o’clock or so before we get around to eating anything, by which point we’re starving. So elaborate and hearty brunches are very much a thing for us — you can see some of my previous efforts.

This dish was inspired by a post by Delishy Town that I spotted on Tumblr’s food tag page.

It was easy to make, too:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 deg C (375 deg F).
2. Dice half an onion, fry gently for a few minutes.
3. Finely dice a handful of mushrooms, add to the pan with the onions.
4. Optional: discover some leftover taco meat in the fridge from when your wife made nachos. Throw that in too.
5. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes to the pan. Bring to the boil, season, add spices if desired, and leave to simmer and reduce a little while you do the next bit.
6. Get some of those long, red, pointed peppers that most supermarkets sell these days. Halve them through the stalk and carefully remove the ribs and seeds.
7. Turn the chilli mix out into an ovenproof dish. Put the peppers on top. One by one, crack eggs into a small bowl, then pour them into the peppers.
8. Cover with grated cheese.
9. Put the whole lot into the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is browned and the egg cooked through.
10. Get a couple of tortillas and quarter them with a sharp knife. Dip some kitchen towel in flavourless cooking oil (vegetable or groundnut) and wipe the tortillas down. Put them on a baking sheet.
11. Put the tortillas in the oven for the last 5 minutes of the cooking time.

It was very tasty, and a nice change from the normal sorts of things we eat for brunch. —Rich

Scrambled eggs (with cream cheese and spring onions) and smoked salmon on a toasted English muffin.

I often make this (or variations on the theme) as a luxury weekend brunch. I prefer my scrambled eggs to be loose and creamy rather than fluffy and dry, so I break eggs directly into the frying pan (bonus — less work!), roughly scramble them with a spatula, and then cook them slowly with infrequent stirring. Dairy (usually cream cheese or a little light cream) and seasoning goes in at the end, not the beginning — I’ve read that salt added beforehand can toughen the eggs if added beforehand, because it draws water out of the protein cells. The cold-from-the-fridge dairy also helps to arrest the cooking process too, stopping the eggs from drying out. —Rich

Weekend brunch!

Mushrooms fried with garlic and parsley on bruschetta.

Weekend brunch! Cinnamon and vanilla french toast with smoked back bacon and maple syrup.

Weekend brunch! Applewood smoked salmon and scrambled egg with a toasted English muffin.