Rosie Lovell - Spooning with Rosie

Crack the eggs into a microwaveable bowl. Lightly beat them with the cream and salt, so that there are still some defined yellow and white bits. Slice the ciabatta and place under a low grill, dough side up, in order to crisp up and lightly brown. Place the eggs in the microwave for 1 minute. With a fork, scrape around the edges of the bowl and break up any firmer bits. Return it to the microwave for another minute and repeat the process. It may need a further 20 seconds. Be careful not to overcook the eggs. They should be creamy and delicious and lightly risen, which, remarkably, the microwave is perfect for. They continue cooking once they are removed from the bowl, so if in doubt, do slightly undercook them.

If you do not own or prefer not to use a microwave, making them old-school style is great too. For this, melt a little extra butter in a medium pan. Beat together the eggs, cream and salt while the butter is slowly warming. Add this to the pan, and continually stir with a flat-ended wooden spoon to keep pulling up the cooked layers of egg that are created at the bottom of the pan. When the eggs are still pretty liquid but forming enticing sunny lumps, remove from the heat to sit for a few minutes. Just as with the microwave method, the eggs will continue cooking even when removed from the heat. And so, by removing them early, this is how to get them perfectly creamy and not overdone.

Once removed from the grill, lather the ciabatta with butter, arrange on two plates with the prosciutto and chilli jam, and divide the eggs between the plates. Scrunch over a hefty dose of ground black pepper for seriously perfect eggs.

Makes 2 loaves

Soda bread is a wonderful cheat’s bread. It makes for an encouraging initiation into the world of baking, so get cracking. My mother skilfully leavened abundant firm loaves practically daily, decorated with beautiful wheatears and laden with seeds. But for me, it felt like a whole other level of kitchen excellence, slightly out of my reach. By its very nature, soda bread does not require all the leavening and kneading of a normal yeast loaf, so don’t be shy. And once you can see the texture that it needs to be, sloppy but nutty, like a moist porridge, you can be free to throw in whatever you want: poppy seeds, dried herbs, sesame seeds, olives, pumpkin seeds. And you can substitute the sugar here with good honey, for a deeper flavour. Making two loaves, you can put one in the freezer for a rainy day, but if you just want to bake one loaf, divide the quantities below in half.

Of course there’s something deeply impressive about baking your own bread, so I frequently find myself making Mum’s soda bread when I’ve got people over for dinner. It’s so easy: make the bread first (as soon as you get in the door), and while it’s in the oven you’ll have time to prepare some other knick-knacks for dinner. It’s particularly delicious with my favourite salmon and fennel pâté (see page 95) and a crunchy salad. And incidentally, it’s slightly lower in gluten due to the spelt flour.

a small knob of butter

200g wholemeal flour, plus a little more for dusting the bread tins

300g spelt flour

4 tablespoons bran

2 tablespoons wheat germ

2 heaped teaspoons baking powder

Maldon sea salt

1 tablespoon muscovado sugar

4 tablespoons sesame seeds

1 tablespoon caraway seeds

2 teaspoons coriander seeds

100g linseeds

565ml semi-skimmed milk (milk on the turn is even better)

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Butter two traditional 900g bread tins (about 19 × 11cm) and then lightly flour each one, banging it around so that the base and sides are lightly dusted. Set these aside. Measure out the flours, bran, wheat germ, baking powder, salt, sugar and seeds into a big mixing bowl. With a fork toss around to evenly distribute the flours and seeds. Then measure out the milk and gradually mix it in with the fork. It should look sloppy, so don’t worry if it doesn’t look how you imagine bread dough to be. The reason it is so wet is so that it makes for a really deep flavour, once everything has been dehydrated by the baking process.

Turn this mix out evenly between the two bread tins, which will require you to use a spatula to get all the liquidy cakey mix out. Place in the oven for 25 minutes. It should have risen by this point and be crisp and cracking on the top. Then turn the oven down to 170°C/Gas 3 and continue baking for a further hour and 10 minutes.

Once removed from the oven, turn out the loaves on to a cooling rack for an hour. If they are baked right, they should make a hollow sound when tapped on the bottom. These loaves are best when they have been cooled for a few hours or overnight. Eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner with unsalted butter.

Makes 1 loaf

100g white flour

150g wholemeal flour

1 1/ 2tablespoons bran

1 tablespoon wheat germ

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 handfuls of sesame seeds

1 dessertspoon honey

1 tablespoon tomato purée

150ml full-fat milk

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Follow the directions above, adding the tomato purée to the milk to dissolve it. Then mix the milk into all the dry ingredients as normal and bake for an extra 20 minutes to dry out any excess moisture.

For 2

In New York for a decadent long weekend, I gorged on those famed diner breakfasts and my good friend Rupert immediately leapt to the forefront of my mind. When we lived together in Edinburgh, he’d emerge from his cupboard-like room at 1 p.m., saunter down to the shop and buy his essential breakfast ingredients, and offer up this fantastic creation to whoever was disclosing their woes at our kitchen table.

This early morning dish has all the abundance of a New York start, with the thick sweetness of syrup and saltiness of bacon. (There’s something really great about sweet things like maple syrup with bacon. Actually almost anything sweet with pork is a winner: honey, apples, plum sauce, a sugar glaze with cloves…) According to heroic food writer Jake Tilson, ‘For a Breakfast lover, visiting New York is like finding the source of the Nile.’ That amazing American abundance: never-ending weak coffee, and sticky jugs of maple syrup at every table. This breakfast combines both Rupert’s loving moniker, and that distinctive New York flavour.

4 large free-range eggs

1 coffee-sized cup of full-fat milk

freshly ground black pepper

Maldon sea salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 slices of really soft fresh white bloomer

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

maple syrup

Find a wide flat-bottomed bowl or serving dish, and in it beat together the eggs, milk, pepper and salt. You will need to get two frying pans hot and at the ready. If possible, a bigger one for the bread, and a smaller one for the bacon. Divide the vegetable oil between these pans. Allow 2 of the slices of bread to soak in the egg bowl and drink up a quarter of the beaten egg. When the oil is quivering, begin by frying the rashers in the small pan. Turn the slices of bread over and coat again to absorb a further quarter of the egg mix. Add the 2 slices to the bigger of the pans, and get the other 2 slices of bread soaking in the same way so that all the egg is equally absorbed. Now add these to the larger bread pan. Sizzle each side of the bread slices, while keeping an eye on the bacon. The bacon should be beginning to brown and crisp at the edges. When the bread slices are browned as well, and slightly swollen and risen, remove to a plate and top with the crisp bacon and lots of maple syrup. Have it with strong tea, and a good gas.