chef who founded the Asian and Oriental School of Cookery in Hoxton, London. The school teaches disadvantaged local kids how to cook traditional recipes and then places them into good culinary jobs (deservedly Cyrus received an MBE in recognition of the skill he has in motivating and inspiring the students to flourish).
I’ve expanded the original recipe to include celeriac and kohlrabi, because I like them, plus I’ve added some different spices and European flavours like olive oil and parsley. It’s a mix between a Parsee dish and a French dauphinoise dish, but quicker, lighter and made on the hob instead of in the oven. I love it, especially the morning after the night before.
PARSES PARSLEY POTATOES ‘N’ EGGS
BREAKFAST FOR 4 NORMAL PEOPLE, OR 2 GREEDY ONES:
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon cumin seeds, pounded with a pestle
½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds, pounded with a pestle
½ teaspoon mustard seeds, pounded with a pestle
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 fresh green chilli, seeds and membrane removed, and crushed
1 medium onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1 small potato, scrubbed and thinly sliced
1 small kohlrabi, washed and thinly sliced
⅔ celeriac, scrubbed and thinly sliced
A pinch of salt
4 eggs, 1 of which is washed thoroughly and dried
A handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
Heat the oil in a large, deep frying pan, over a medium heat, and add the pounded spice seeds when it’s hot. Saute for a minute, stirring with a wooden spatula, and then add the garlic and chilli. Stir this about for another minute, then add the onion and keep frying for a few minutes until it’s going opaque. Add the potato, kohlrabi and celeriac, fry for a few minutes and then pour in enough water to nearly cover the vegetables. Throw in a pinch of salt, cover the pan, lower the heat, and leave to slowly simmer for about 10 minutes.
Check if the vegetables are cooked; if not, leave it to simmer for a couple more minutes. When they’re tender, sprinkle in the parsley and turn the mixture slowly with the spatula, taking care not to break the vegetables up too much. Level the vegetables out again, then take the clean egg and use the outside of the shell to make four dips in the mixture at regularly spaced intervals. Crack all of the eggs, putting one into each dip.
Put the lid back on the pan and slowly cook over a low heat until the egg yolks are poached to your liking. Cut into quarters with the edge of a fish slice and serve up with crusty bread and butter.
Everybody in America knows about this stuff, but it’s not often made in the UK. I don’t know why – it’s so quick and easy, perfumes your kitchen with a sweet home-baking smell, is deliriously good for you and saves a fortune on decent muesli. Before preparing the granola, make sure you have a big re-usable plastic container to store it in.
Granola can be served with any kind of milk. All organic cow’s milk is good quality milk, scientifically proven to contain at least 60 per cent more alpha-linoleic acids (which help to keep your heart healthy) than nonorganic milk. I make a point of buying Manor Farm milk. Pam and Will Best, the couple whose cows produce it, have been dedicated dairy farmers for over 35 years and their experience and care is reflected not only in the texture and creaminess of the milk but in its sweet, clean taste.
Part of the reason Manor Farm’s milk tastes so sweet is that the cows munch on clover, chicory, alfalfa and other sweet-tasting salad crops. These are planted for practical cow-welfare and soil-enriching reasons, but they also add a back note to the final pint. Or maybe their cows are just particularly content. However, the main difference between Manor Farm’s milk and almost every other organic cow’s milk is that it’s not been homogenized.
Homogenization is a mechanical process that became widespread with the demise of the milkman and the rise of the supermarket. When we were kids, we shook a recyclable glass milk bottle every morning before pouring the milk. Or, if we were feeling naughty, we’d have the top of the milk when our mums weren’t looking. When everyone started buying milk in those plastic bottle-like containers that now inhabit every fridge door, the marketing men decided that the cream floating on top of our pints was an unsightly blemish. Something had to be done, and that something was homogenization.
The milk is squeezed through a tiny tube at very high pressure, so that all the lovely cream globules break down into tiny-weeny cream globules that you don’t notice and therefore can’t enjoy. All the unsightly cream disappears and the plastic bottle-like containers look fat-free. Of course they’re not really any lower in fat, plus they take away the freedom of choice to either go for the cream or avoid it.
There are no chemicals involved with homogenization, so it’s perfectly legal for organic milk producers to do it. It just doesn’t seem like the greatest idea to me – processing purely for cosmetic reasons. And there’s some evidence building that homogenized milk is bad for your heart.
I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that non-homogenized milk tastes better, has a better texture and allows the drinker to choose top-of-the-milk or shaken-up. And it comes in a paper-based carton, as opposed to a plastic bottle that will never decompose.
But back to breakfast, a time of happy optimism. When they’re in season, you can use cobnuts instead of hazelnuts in recipes, as cobnuts are simply a local Kentish type of hazelnut. They’re officially in season from St Philbert’s day on 23rd August until Christmas Day. Cobnuts are always sold as a whole nut and generally wrapped in their individual green leafy coats. They’re long and thumbnail-shaped, succulent and delicious, with a milder flavour than the round hazelnuts you get pre-shelled in packets. Make sure you do the shelling when nobody’s about, otherwise all the nuts are guaranteed to be gobbled up before the granola hits the oven.
Popped amaranth also features in this granola mix. This tiny seed from South America is a very special grain that’s like no other.
I went on a solo journey into the Amazon some years ago and found it a very hot, scary and noisy experience, with hundreds of animals and insects making a major racket all night long with their scuttling around, buzzing and general liveliness. Anyway, the local people paint their faces with an orangey-red natural greasepaint, which looks wicked and protects their skin from the sun, as it’s a bonafide total sun block. This stuff is made out of amaranth flower heads, which are big fluffy, feathery things.
Inside the flowers are thousands of tiny amaranth seeds, about 50,000 seeds per plant. The seeds are highly nutritious, full of protein and fibre, and also rich in iron, calcium and vitamin A. In fact, they contain double the amount of calcium as cow’s milk and five times more iron than wheat. And they’re also one of the only types of seed that can be popped, just like popcorn, as opposed to the many that are actually puffed, like rice.
So why aren’t we all eating lots of lovely amaranth? It’s all down to history. The Spanish conquistadors banned amaranth from polite society after discovering the traditional Aztec ritual use of these little seeds. Aztec women made sacred little dollies out of ground amaranth seeds, honey and their own monthly blood, for ceremonial eating, emulating human sacrificial rites. Quite frankly, this didn’t go down at all well with the 16th-century Spanish colonialists, who nearly