I first came across a recipe for Baghdad eggs in one of my favourite cook books, Jake Tilson’s ‘A Tale of 12 Kitchens’ (from which I also cooked a mummified chicken). Tilson discovered the recipe in the book ‘Medieval Arab Cookery‘, which describes eggs on a bed of spiced celery; my version however is more akin to modern recipes I’ve seen.

An egg is fried gently on a bed of softened onions, sizzled with lemon juice, sprinkled with cumin and paprika then slicked with melted butter. The whole lot is served on top of toasted pitta, which softens in places under the oozy egg. A dollop of yoghurt and a flurry of chopped mint contrast the richness.

This is quite indulgent considering the aforementioned butter, which is why it’s my new favourite Sunday brunch, Middle Eastern style.

Baghdad Eggs (serves 2)

1 medium onion, diced
2 eggs
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 good generous knobs of butter
Cumin
Hot paprika
Yoghurt
Mint, chopped
Squeeze of lemon juice
2 toasted pittas

Melt a knob of butter in a frying pan and cook the onions gently until they start to soften. Add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, then crack in the eggs.

Dust each egg with a little cumin and paprika (use your fingers to do this and be conservative – you don’t want huge clumps of spice in there), plus some salt and pepper then put a lid on and let cook until the eggs are just set. Toast your pitta breads then split them apart and toast the er, untoasted side under the grill.

In a separate small pan, melt another knob of butter and sprinkle a little extra cumin and paprika into it. Leave this on a low heat to get a little brown and nutty.

When the eggs are cooked, cut up the pitta and arrange on a plate. Put an egg on top, making sure to get plenty of the onions too. Drizzle with some of the extra melted butter and garnish with a dollop of yoghurt and some mint.

I’ve written a Peckham-influenced shakshuka recipe for my column on AoL Lifestyle. Shakshuka is a classic Middle Eastern dish of peppers, onions and poached eggs – it’s pretty intensely flavoured when it comes down to it, especially super-charged Peckham-style with scotch bonnet chilli and thyme. This is one of my favourite weekend brunches; head over to Lifestyle for the recipe.

I never thought I’d find myself writing about muesli. The word brings to mind bowls of dusty old oats that either catch in your throat or have you chewing each mouthful for an eternity; the bland food of Health Freaks and Nutrition Nuts, more punishment than breakfast.

Bircher (let’s not call it ‘muesli’) is different because the oats are soaked overnight in apple juice (use cloudy juice for the best flavour) and by morning they have plumped and sweetened. I then add creamy natural yoghurt (full fat, please), grated apple and mix it all together before topping with whatever I around; this morning it was pomegranate seeds and pistachios. Yesterday it was sliced bananas, toasted coconut, sunflower seeds and a good drizzle of runny honey.

This is the only breakfast that has ever been able to keep me going right through until lunch and that’s saying something because even after a full English I’ll be ready for snacking at 11am.

Bircher Muesli

About 50g rolled oats
Enough apple juice to cover the oats
A couple of tablespoons of thick, natural yoghurt
Half an apple
Whatever toppings you fancy. Banana, hazelnuts, almonds, pistachios, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, pomegranate seeds, seasonal berries, whatever.
A drizzle of honey.

Combine the oats and apple juice and leave to combine for at least an hour but preferably overnight. Grate in the apple, add the yoghurt and stir to combine.

Add your toppings. Done.

I had bacon with them, naturally. And a poached egg. Oh and mushrooms. There’s no point messing about when it comes to brunch.

Somehow, I did not know about potato cakes. I think I’m in love. Their fluffy texture, almost like that of a thick pancake, sends them rocketing up the comfort food scale only pausing briefly to turn back and stick two fingers up to toast. They are perfect slabs of doughy carb, ready and willing to soak up the runny yolk from a just-poached egg. Top and bottom are burnished golden and crisp, like a bubble and squeak.

This recipe is from king of dough Dan Lepard; he adds parsley which brings a nice savoury note. I push it a little further with some finely chopped spring onion. We ate the first wedges as above. The rest I ate very shortly afterwards (about 30 seconds), straight from the pan with my hands.

They’re dead easy to make, too. You have to cook a couple of spuds but then it’s just mix your wet ingredients, mix your dry ingredients, combine them, slop into the pan and cook. I reckon it’s even do-able with a hangover.

Potato cakes with parsley and spring onion (adapted only slightly from The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard)

125g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1 medium egg
100ml milk, at 20C (I just heated mine briefly in a pan until it was warm and it was fine)
60g unsalted butter, at room temperature
250g potatoes, cooked and mashed
4 spring onions finely, chopped (white and green parts)
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped

Mix the flour, soda and salt in a large bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces and mix it into the flour with your fingers until the lumps are gone.

In a separate bowl, mix the mashed potato with the egg then beat in the milk, parsley and spring onion. Combine the egg and potato mix with the flour and butter mix and combine well into a sticky dough. Heat a large frying pan or skillet (I used the latter) then melt 1 tablespoon of dripping or vegetable oil in the pan. Make sure it coats the whole base of the pan. Scrape the dough into the pan and then do your best to spread it out a bit into a circle.

Leave to cook for 4-5 minutes, ideally with a lid on. When the base is crisp and lightly golden, loosen the edges with a spatula. Take a very well-oiled plate (that’s important, don’t be shy with the oil) and flip the cake out of the pan and on to it. You can then slide the cake back into the pan to cook the other side. This is why you need to oil the plate well – if you don’t the uncooked doughy side will stick to it. Cook for a further 4-5 minutes then either turn it out or cut wedges from the pan. I recommend bacon, mushrooms and a poached egg as accompaniments. I’m not going to get into a debate about sauce.

I usually serve these with bacon. It’s sweet n salty amazing. This scotch bonnet salsa is also lovely, but there’s a clear lack of pork in the picture and for that I apologise.

Corn is dirt cheap right now and I constantly hear it begging me to shear it from the cob and fritter the living daylights out of it. The fresh stuff really keeps its succulence but canned and frozen will also work. There are all sorts of things you could add to the mix; Simon suggested cockles, which I’m dying to try. Salt fish is a favourite, if a little more effort. Often though I prefer a simple recipe – a touch of spice, a little spring onion and fresh herbs; it’s all about the corn.

Fiona Beckett asked me to contribute a recipe to her student cooking site, Beyond Baked Beans and so this is it. The recipe is easy, fun to make and when served with bacon and perhaps an egg, one of the best hangover cures known to woman. What more could a student want from a meal? If you can stomach it though, there’s literally no better accompaniment than an ice cold beer.

Corn Fritters

140g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg, lightly beaten with a fork
220ml milk
3 large corn cobs
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
3 spring onions, finely sliced
A small handful of fresh herbs, such as mint, coriander or parsley
If you’re not serving this with a hot sauce, try adding a finely chopped red chilli in the batter
Salt and pepper

Vegetable or groundnut oil, for frying

Sift the flour into a large bowl with the baking powder. Pour in the milk and mix well to make a smooth batter.

Remove any outer papery husk and strings from the corn cobs then stand one on its end on a chopping board and carefully run your knife down one side to remove the kernels. Repeat this until all the kernels are stripped off and then add them to the batter. Add the egg, spices and spring onion and season with two large pinches each of salt and pepper.

Heat a 1cm depth of oil in a heavy based frying pan or skillet and wait until it starts shimmering, but not smoking. Turn the heat to medium-high. Drop a tablespoon of the batter into the oil at a time and immediately flatten it out into a round fritter shape. It will take a few minutes to turn golden on the underneath – you can then flip it over and brown the other side. Be wary as the oil will spit a little and splash as you turn them. Set aside to drain of excess oil on kitchen paper then keep warm in an oven on its lowest setting while you make the rest. Don’t be tempted to try and put too many in the pan at once.

Serve with bacon. And perhaps egg. Or anything else you fancy.

Labneh is strained yoghurt. Now now, do bear with me, it’s delicious. You mix regular, full-fat Greek yoghurt with a scant half-teaspoon of salt then bung it in some muslin and hang it over a bowl overnight. Drip, drip, drip. In the morning all the whey has drained away and what remains is a creamy thick ‘yoghurt-cheese’. It’s magic scooped up with warmed flat breads and sprinkled with za’atar, smeared in a kebab, or rolled into balls, covered with herbs and stored in olive oil.* I’ve taken to eating it plain on walnut toast first thing too; the contrast of hot toast and cool, tangy topping really floats my breakfast boat.

Popular in the Middle East and South Asia, it pops up in mezze, sandwiches, dips and even desserts. It’s basically a flavour whore and will take whatever it can get.

When it comes to comfort snacking, I tend to top it with my salty little friends the anchovies; briny, umami-packed miniatures. First it was the boiled egg with anchovy dippers, then the baked eggs with the same. Now I can’t get enough of them slivered and draped over the labneh, prickled with chilli and sprinkled with whatever herbs are lying around, or perhaps some papery shavings of red onion.

Despite labneh’s surprising richness, I like to reason with myself that it’s fairly healthy; not that the fat content of anything has ever held me back, as I’m sure you’ve come to realise. A drizzle of olive oil is all that’s needed to counter the balance back towards gluttonsville though, so don’t worry about that.

Labneh with chilli and anchovy

500g good quality, full fat Greek yoghurt (I find Total is the best brand)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
Anchovy fillets, sliced in half lengthways
1 small mild red chilli, finely chopped
A few leaves parsley (or other herbs), finely chopped
Black pepper
Good bread, toasted, to serve

Muslin and string to strain the yoghurt

Mix the yoghurt with the salt then line a bowl with the muslin and dollop the yoghurt in the middle. Gather up the muslin then tie the top with string and hang somewhere (preferably cool, although I’ve never had a problem in my kitchen), over a bowl, overnight. In the morning remove from the muslin, mix in the lemon juice and refrigerate until needed. It will last a few days.

Spread on hot toast and top with the anchovies, chilli and herbs. Some black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil won’t go amiss.

* I’ll dig out a jar and post a piccy and recipe up for you; it’s really beautiful.

A weekend brunch is about chilling in the homestead; for me this is the most important time to be ducking in and out of  local shops and showing some love for the hood. Anyway let’s face it, if your Friday nights are anything like mine you probably can’t move your sorry ass too far from the sofa anyway come Saturday morning. It’s a case of a Supermarket Sweep* style dash – gather the goods – in and out – back home to rustle up something warming, protein-heavy and importantly, filling.

So, it’s a Peckham twist on yer classic egg, sausage and tomato combination and it goes like this: in a decent, heavy frying pan brown some sausage slices (I used some beefy ones from Persepolis but you could use chorizo or similar, whatever you can find), then set them aside and soften some good old onion, garlic and chilli (I used fruity and fierce scotch bonnet). Add a tin of good quality tinned toms and 2 generous handfuls of spinach. Finally, crack a couple of eggs on top and let simmer until they’re cooked. A sprinkle of citric sumac, a warmed wedge of onion seed-speckled bread and a dollop of coriander flecked labneh (strained yoghurt) complete the Peckham theme. If it’s the season and you can get your hands on it, Must-e-Moussir (yoghurt with spring garlic) works a treat too.

This still tastes delicious even if you’ve dodged the hangover, but it’s a damn fine cure if you didn’t.

*For a truly disturbing ‘dance’ remix of the Supermarket Sweep theme tune featuring host Dale Winton, various shoppers and a guy in high-waisted bleached denim, click here.

Me and crumpets have got history. My first attempt was a complete failure; the batter was wrong, the cooking was wrong, the finished product was wronger than wrong. I ended up with a pile of stodgy, under cooked discs, which lacked that most distinguishing and important of crumpet features – holes. If they don’t have holes then the butter can’t get in. Enough said.

My second attempt was more promising, mostly down to the good advice of Bea, who suggested I use a different recipe and make a couple of tweaks. The batter this time was spectacularly gaseous and I was effervescent with excitement. The bubbles in the batter rise to the top during cooking and burst, leaving that essential network of butter channels. I thought I’d nailed it. Well, I thought Bea had nailed it.

They did produce some holes – an improvement on the first attempt, but still not good enough. Bea was flummoxed and I was inconsolable until some helpful soul ventured to ask the rather personal question, “how old is your bicarbonate of soda?” I hung my head in shame and squeaked out the admission: “don’t really know; at least two years, probably three, maybe four.”

That was back in July. Despite being certain that this embarrassing discovery marked the end of my crumpet woes, I just couldn’t face making them again until now. The thought of a third failure too traumatic perhaps? Well, it almost happened again; I forgot to put the bicarb in. I honestly couldn’t believe what was happening, but through the mist of disappointment and dizzying fog of frustration I just slung it in half an hour late, re-mixed, re-covered and hoped for the best.

And…it worked. Hallelujah! They were spongy and light, with more holes than an OJ Simpson alibi. Finally, a recipe for crumps that I can rely on, and of course I’ve learned a thing or two about making them along the way. Here it is:

1. Using rings is a right faff. You have to oil them repeatedly (until you can’t be bothered any more) and lift them up using tongs while simultaneously trying to release the crumpet with a knife. Next time I’ll freestyle.

2. Making crumpets takes time. If you try and rush them (by turning up the heat) they will burn on the bottom before they are cooked on top.

3. Keeping bicarbonate of soda for longer than two years is skanky and pointless.

4. I’ve made every single mistake in the book so you don’t have to.

Crumpets

This mix makes about 14 crumpets. Just think, if you remember to put your bicarb in at the right time, your crumps could have even more holes than mine! (Edit: Miss Marmite Lover has made a brilliant suggestion in the comments: she adds more bicarb than the recipe suggests. Obvious now I think about it. This is a brilliant way to get more holes).

360g plain flour
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
580ml warm milk
1.5 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Combine the yeast and sugar with 250ml of the warm milk in a bowl. Do make sure the milk is just warm, not hot. Cover and leave in a warm place to rest for about 10 minutes until frothy.

Sift the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into another bowl then make a well in the centre and add the yeasty mix along with the rest of the warm milk. Mix this to a thick batter using a wooden spoon. Cover it with cling film and allow to rest in a warm place for about an hour. The film will rise up as gases build up inside. This is good. The result is an extremely light and aerated batter.

Heat a wide pan over a medium heat then turn down fairly low. Use a piece of kitchen paper to wipe vegetable or groundnut oil over the base so it is coated in a nice film. Do the same to your rings if using or you can freestyle (i.e drop blobs of batter into the pan). Allow to cook for about 8 minutes or so or until they appear ‘dry’ on top, then flip them over to toast lightly for a minute on the other side. Remove to a wire rack to cool. Repeat as necessary. They can then be re-heated under a grill to crisp up more before serving. Spread liberally with butter and then rejoice in their holey juiciness.

A huge thank you once again to Bea. Without your advice I may never have lifted myself from the depths of crumpy despair.