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Always fancied making a homemade scotch egg but not got a deep fat fryer? Fear not we’ve got it covered with a recipe needing only a standard frying pan below.

Ingredients

  • 1 packet sausage meat
  • 50g breadcrumbs
  • 50g plain flour
  • 1 egg beaten
  • 2 eggs whole
  • salt and pepper

Optional

Chopped herbs of your choice such as thyme, rosemary or a whole sage leaf cooked in with the butter and disgarded to flavour the pan.
Cayenne pepper or chopped fresh chilli.

homemade pan fried scotch egg being made

Instructions

Divide the sausage meat into two. Season the sausage meat with Salt and pepper and add any of the optional ingredients. Mix with your hands to combine then divide into two.

Make two doughnut shapes out of the sausage mix leaving a hole in the middle big enough to hold one cracked egg but remembering that the whole will close up slightly when cooking.

I found the donugt too flimsy to handle to dunk into the breadcrumb ingredients so i dabbed the plain flour around the edges of the sausage then brushed the beaten egg mixture around the edges too. Once the egg has coated the edges, dab it with the breadcrumbs to stick to the outside of the sausage doughnut.

Melt some butter in a pan then place the sausage donugts into the pan to brown the one side. After a few minutes turn the sausage over and continue to cook the other side for a couple of minutes. Crack an egg into the whole in the middle and cook for a couple more minutes for the bottom to set and sausage to firm up on the bottom.

Transfer to a baking sheet and cook for around 8 minutes making sure the sausage is cooked but you don’t want to overdue the eggs as they are 10 times better runny.

Enjoy on it’s own with a helping of a good tomato sauce or as part of a mammoth fry up breakfast.

homemade pan fried scotch egg  with breakfast

Coconut, chia seed, bee pollen and honey overnight oats

Ingredients

  • 50g oats
  • 125ml protein yogurt
  • splash of whole milk
  • 2 teaspoons chia seeds
  • 1/2 an apple either chopped finely or julienned
  • 2 teaspoons shredded coconut
  • 2 teaspoons honey
  • 2 teaspoons bee pollen

Instructions

Mix the oats, chia seeds, coconut and honey with the splash of milk as i don’t find it mixes as well as just with the yogurt on its own. Add the yogurt, apple and bee pollen and mix to combine making sure it’s fully incorporated so you don’t have clumps of dry oats in the mix.

Leave overnight in a kilner jar to soak and for the bee pollen to break down its outer shell, leaving you with all it’s honey bee goodness. Enjoy for breakfast, mid morning snack or post gym recovery meal. It will leave you feeling full and satisfied for hours.

So last week I decided to explore a bit more of North Wales considering i’ve probably visited more of England than my home country. I flew to Anglesey from Cardiff and not sure where to visit at first and it still being quite early I decided on a drive to Colwyn Bay to sample breakfast at Bryn Williams at Port Eirias.

It took a bit a while to get to the promenade as there were signs up saying road closed yet no other road to get to Bryn Williams restaurant on the front so we took life in our own hands and sped past the signs and parked up outside.

The place seemed to be nestled inside a visitor centre on the front of Colwyn Bay and looked like a collaboration between the local council and the well known Welsh Chef no doubt taking on local food college student’s to teach them a trade by dishing out well presented plates to visitors of the beach front location.

bryn-williams-port-eirias-restaurant-decor-2-1

I loved the decor inside although it did look like it was built then dropped in the middle of a community centre and didn’t quite blend in to the rest of the building but then that’s not their problem as the rest of the building seemed to be council run with a lot smaller budget. There were plenty of Bryn William’s latest books scattered around on the book shelves for you to take a look at and add to your order and if the weather wasn’t like a monsoon outside it would of been an amazing view with breakfast or lunch. I wouldn’t be surprised if they let you take the food outside if the sun was out but it was just my luck it was grey, wet and miserable out there.

bryn-williams-port-eirias-restaurant-decor-1

I’ve been on a mission of late to sample as many breakfasts as possible in hope that it will spurn me on to keep this blog up to date and keeping in with my usual full breakfast and to compare it to last week’s one at the Angel Hotel in Abergavenny I settled for the same.

The Food

So on expecting the menu and browsing the Facebook page the smashed avocado and runny poached egg did start me salivating but for a fair comparison to the Angel full breakfast it was only right I ordered the same here although I skipped on the Bloody Mary seeing that I had to drive to Chester for the night after i’d finished my food.

The full breakfast contained the following:

  • Sausage wheel
  • Poached egg
  • 2 rashers of bacon
  • Gilled Tomato
  • Flat mushroom

I was asked if I wanted toast, which I quite rightly agreed to with no mention of the extra £1.50 charge on top of the £8.50 I wasn’t impressed when this showed up on the bill.

Instead of the Bloody Mary like last week I opted for a blend of breakfast teas in a pot for £3 and had enough for just over 2 cups and was a good brew to be fair but I was a bit disappointed with the breakfast. The black pudding, which I’ve been a recent convert after only knowing charcoal briquette like examples from a burger van I was put off for years was the saving grace on the plate and was the best i’ve tried yet. The breakfast was ok and i’ve probably had worse but it just didn’t fill me with excitement especially with the name of the chef above the door.

My fellow guest had the Eggs Royale again for a fair comparison to the ones ordered at the Angel the week before. I have to admit if I wasn’t so petrified of the sight and smell of avocado I would of been all over this as the portions were very generous and the oozing egg yolks paired with the creamy hollandaise did make me drool a little.

The verdict was very good for the Eggs Royale and i’d be tempted to try my favourite hangover cure Eggs Benedict a try or the avocado and eggs toast but I wouldn’t be in a hurry to go back from the full breakfast especially at £10 after the stealth tax on the toast added to the £8.50 cost. The Eggs Royale came in at the same price too but looked a lot more filling.

Total cost came in around £25 for the full breakfast, toast, eggs royale, coffee and tea.

If like me you’re struggling to get back into some sense of reality after gorging yourself on a weeks worth of calories in a single sitting after Christmas, then you will be glad to hear you can actually have a breakfast that will leave you feeling fulfilled without needing an immediate course of liposuction to suck the gallon of grease straight out of your hips!

Step forward Pure Kitchen in Cardiff Bay on the doorstep of the Wales Millennium Centre offering hearty, guilt free, flavour bombs for breakfast and lunch from 4 egg omelettes with grilled chicken, chorizo or steak breakfasts, full english breakfasts, toasted muffins or pancakes topped with fresh fruit.

Pure Kitchen offer breakfasts, fresh smoothies and juices, salads and freshly cooked lunches with the leanest of meats you could ever have adorning your plate to eat in or packed tightly into a takeaway box to eat at your leisure.

You’ve probably walked past one of Cardiff Bay’s most rated breakfast eateries, which managed to chart on Buzzfeed’s top 16 places to grab breakfast in the Capital recently as it’s parked in between the roads directly outside the Wales Millennium Centre and opposite your route from The Red Dragon Centre to the Bay.

If you fancy sampling some of the best breakfasts on offer in Cardiff then head over to Livingsocial and get a Pure Kitchen discount voucher offering you two breakfasts with a hot drink for just £9 up to the value of £21 or 4 dinners can get a paleo inspired breakfast fit for you Crossfit lovers on your next trip down the bay for just £18 up to the value of £42.

You can get this Pure Kitchen breakfast discount in Cardiff Bay for the next 5 days with the voucher then having to be used by February 26th 2016 between 9-11am.

So it’s Sunday morning/afternoon and you crawl out of bed, slide down the stairs on your ass and manage to make it to the fridge on all fours to try and and empty the contents inside in an attempt to make this pain go away…is it hunger…is it tiredness…is it a hangover…? Who cares, it wasn’t self inflicted it must of been the pint of water that took you over the edge before you collapsed onto the bed fully clothed last night but you need food inside you and you need it now!

A fry up is usually the only cure known to man for a hangover normally but there’s so much cooking, juggling sauce pans, frying pans, checking you don’t burn the toast and if you didn’t have a headache before you will by then! That is until now…i give to you THE ULTIMATE CHEESE TOASTIE!

This is a one pan wonder, which mean’s you can rest your head on the worktop as the frying pan does it’s magic and turns your dairy and cured meats into a perfect hangover busting combination without a shed load of washing up after it too!

Ingredients

So you can change this according to taste if you don’t like something then leave it out or replace it with something else but don’t go mental as the contents will spill out and the cheese will not marry the juicy goodness together and ruin this now staple Sunday morning plate of fried magic on a plate!

best-cheese-toastie-5

  • 2 pieces of your favourite bread
  • 1 rasher of bacon
  • 1 piece of salami about 1 inch thick from a whole sausage (I used picante the spicy one but whatever you prefer)
  • 1 half a red onion. Mine were tiny so 1/4 of a standard size should be enough
  • slices of your favourite cheese. I used a strong mature cheddar and didn’t need much as it was so strong.
  • 1 egg

Instructions