Australia Day Breakfast K.O.

Sometimes I plate something up, as they say, and knock myself out. Just look at this. Delicious colourful Opera House goodness. Yellow-crested cockatoo on toast without harming animals. Red sails in the sunset, without the apocalyse! Is that toast shaped like Uluru?

Like my mother before me (and many others? most people? I lead an insular life) I am very fond of stone fruit on toast for breakfast: these are apricots. Buttered toast, wedges of fruit and an optional squeeze of lemon and sprinkling of sugar on top.

The toast under the egg is also, of course, spread with Vegemite, which is pretty much the only way I eat boiled eggs (apart from SCG Egg Sandwiches, of course).

And I choose to interpret the slight burning of the toast as a reference to the traditional charring of the Australian barbecued sausage.

SCG Egg Sandwiches

Completed Egg Sandwich, in kitchen (you make them before you get to the ground).

The saving grace of any day at the cricket, however dismal in other respects, is egg sandwiches. Egg sandwiches can raise doubts in the mind of some, especially as a packed lunch - "who opened their lunchbox?", I hear you say.

It's a reasonable objection. The keys to countering it are: plenty of mayonnaise and, I cannot stress this enough, lots of parsley. There are a few other pointers.

1. Fluffy white bread. This is not the time for your sourdough, your ciabatta, your multi-grain, or any other "good" bread. Go for the softest and fluffiest loaf from the supermarket (the most "whitebread" white bread, as it were), but not one where the slices are too small or thin, you need it to stand up to plenty of filling. Important note: do not allow the fluffy loaf to be squashed by the big bottles of lemonade and water you also bought for the cricket in your bag on the way home. A squashed fluffy loaf can never be re-fluffed and then where will you be?

2. This is however the time to go for a good mayonnaise. I like BestFoods, but any of those posh "whole-egg" ones would no doubt work.

3. Parsley: I think the old-style curly-leaf parsley is best suited to this dish and it is easier to chop up fine than flat-leaf parsley, which we also want. Personally I think curly-leaf parsley gets a bit of a bad rap.

4. The rest: hard-boiled eggs (look it up), butter (spreadable), salt and pepper and a little curry powder (Keens - naturally).

Making the filling

Chop up the parsley reasonably fine, like I said, so it's something that will really go all through the mixture and not be something you have to chew too much and get stuck in your teeth. Amount: I used about a third of a large bunch of parsley for 4 sandwiches. I don't know how big your bunches of parsley are, just grab a hunk and go. The main thing to keep in mind is that parsley is not just a garnish here, but an important flavouring and counter-egginess agent. Parsley, the "fresh-maker".

Mash the hard-boiled eggs (1 per sandwich) well with a fork with some salt and pepper and a bit of butter (1/2-1 teaspoon per egg). It helps to chop the eggs up a bit with a knife first.

Add the parsley and lots of mayonnaise to the mashed eggs. "Lots" probably means a dollop almost the size of an egg for each egg.

Add a little curry powder. Not a lot, these are not Curried Egg Sandwiches (unless you want them to be), but about a pinch per egg just gives a nice savoury undertone.

Taste and add more salt, pepper, curry powder, parsley etc if necessary.

I usually make this mixture ahead of time and keep it overnight in the fridge.


Making the sandwiches

Spread the slices of bread with a quite thin, even layer of butter, going right to the edge of the slice. This is not just an excuse to have more butter, it will help prevent the bread from going either soggy or dry (magic!). Even if you are using spreadable butter, it helps to take it out of the fridge a little ahead of time to soften it some more so you can do this easily without tearing the bread.

Spread half the slices with a thick, even layer of egg filling, again going right to the edge of the slice.

Place the other slices on top. Cut sandwiches in two.

Packaging the sandwiches

I usually stack each cut sandwich on top of each other in stacks of 2 or 3, alternating the direction of the slice in each sandwich (if that makes sense) for more structural integrity, then wrap them in one or two layers of plastic wrap. The important thing once again is that they not squash, so find a way once again to protect them from those bottles of lemonade. If you have a plastic container that will fit them, perfect. But they will still taste OK even if they are squashed.

To drink with the sandwiches

The SCG now only sells swill in beer-form. We take "special lemonade" which is a lemonade bottle filled with gin and tonic. It will not occur to the security guards checking your bags that someone carrying such beautifully-prepared egg sandwiches could also be - in SCG parlance - a "lout".

X in the Hole

I’m feeling fine, but in the space of a few days I have made 2 dishes called “... in the hole” and in these parts that counts for newsworthy. Blogs have been based on less. You have to start somewhere.

“… in the hole” #1: Toad in the Hole

What? It’s sausages baked in Yorkshire pudding, aka pancake batter.

Why? You’re already having sausages for dinner – hooray! – and now you are pouring carbs over sausages. See how that works?

No, why is it called Toad in the Hole? I don’t know. The “toad” = sausage analogy is OK, sort of, but the “in the hole” part is blowing my mind. There are entire journals devoted to the question of whether a “hole” is defined by emptiness or the bit around the emptiness. Here the “emptiness” of the so-called “hole” is not only filled, but were it not filled, no hole would exist – because the “surrounding” bit starts as liquid – and so the hole comes after what is referred to as “in” it. Next you’ll be telling me it’s actually the sausage that’s the Hole and the Toad is the batter.

More modern, less paradoxical alternative:

• Han Solos in Carbonite

Or, obviously, now I look at my drawing:

• Turds in the Bowl
• Och, Nessie!

How? Make a standard pancake batter, which is 1 egg + 1 cup flour + 1.25 cups milk and a little salt (since it's with sausages, you could add pepper, herbs etc). Mix together (sift flour and salt, make a "well" and add the egg + milk and gradually draw the flour into the egg-milk) and then you’re supposed to “rest” the batter for half an hour. Preheat the oven and brown about 500 g sausages. While browning, put a couple of tablespoons of oil in a baking dish and put it in the oven so that the oil and dish get nice and hot. Arrange sausages in the dish, pour over the batter, put into the oven for half an hour. Salad and onion gravy would be nice with it.* This amount was supposed to serve 4.

* Allow me to remove the ambiguity: I mean "onion gravy and salad".

“… in the hole” #2: Wombat in the Hole
(with thanks to Aunty Carmyl)

What? It’s an egg fried “in” a piece of bread.

How? Take a piece of bread and make a hole by removing a piece about the size of a 50-cent piece from the middle. There are two schools of thought on what happens next. You can fry the piece of bread you have taken out of the middle along with the rest of the piece when you come to the next stage, or you can put it into your mouth. The first school is probably the better option, on reflection, but by the time you have reflected you realise that while you were reflecting you were also chewing. Next time! Melt some butter + oil or some margarine in a frying pan, add the piece of bread, and then either break the egg into the hole in the bread or break the egg into a cup and pour it in. Once the piece of bread is brown on the underside, turn it over to brown on the other side.

Why? There are a couple of advantages that an egg fried in a piece of bread has over a fried egg on a piece of bread. Firstly, fried bread. But secondly, the bread acts as a protective cushion around the yolk so that when you flip it over, the yolk doesn’t break, which can be problem when turning over fried eggs “out in the open”. Also, no rules of logic are harmed in the naming of this dish, for which one has to be grateful by this stage.