Buttery Avocado and Egg Slices

As if you didn’t know already, I love avocados. I have been craving avocado for months, literally. I refrained from paying £1 each for miniature versions that have been hanging around the supermarkets lately, or risking the ones in my local roadside market not knowing whether they would all ripen too quickly once I’d taken them home. Then last week, I went to a trusty avocado seller and came away with a haul of five.

The avocado is a subtle fruit, rich and gentle, with its smooth buttery-green flesh encased in a glossy olive-brown skin. There is something inexplicably captivating about the texture and flavour that I never grow tired of. I love to eat it with a spoon, straight out of the shell. Scoop by scoop, savouring each mouthful and regretting it every time I’ve scraped the last stubborn slither out.

I also love eggs (and lavender – I’ll come to that tomorrow). Versatile, nutritious, flavoursome. Alchemy in a fragile shell. Absolutely delightful and satisfying. Perfect for someone feeling ravenous before supper.

I wouldn’t even call this a recipe. I simply halved an avocado, cut some of it off the bottom to create a flat base and gently heated it in a frying pan. I cracked an egg into the hole and continued to cook until the whites were no longer transparent.

I didn’t want to end up over-frying the avocado so I had to cover it to make sure the egg was cooked. Next time I’ll try heating extra oil on the side and basting the egg during cooking to get a sunny side up properly! No matter, it was absolute yumminess served simply with some freshly ground black pepper on top.

Berry~licious French Toast

I didn’t have a lot of food at home today. I felt too busy on the brain to go out. But I was hungry…

There were a few eggs left in the fridge, bread in the freezer, some cheese I didn’t feel like eating…I felt like something sweet…

And this is what I made: eggy bread, served with wild blueberry conserve, some fresh blueberries and a sprinkling of brown sugar. It was yummy. (Although I was a bit mean with the egg.  I could have used another one for better coverage!)

Beat one egg per each slice of bread. Cut bread into smaller pieces - you can remove the crust if you like at this point. Put into bowl and pour beaten egg over it. Make sure egg gets onto all bread surfaces and leave to soak for a few minutes.

Heat a frying pan and melt a knob of butter to fry the bread until golden brown. (I only used one egg this time and thinned it with some milk, so you can see that my bread is not very eggy.)

Serve with anything you fancy. I was in a sweet mood today, but I was almost tempted to try the Colman's English mustard with some grated Emmental cheese on top when I looked into the fridge again.

When I started making this, I only had the blueberry conserve in mind. But then, I remembered the fresh blueberries I had in my fridge. They worked like magic. I have never combined unsweetened fresh fruit with jam like this before. I was worried the fruit would be too sour. However, the berries tasted really fresh against the sweetness of the jam, and the little pops of juicy tartness actually sharpened the lovely syrupy-ness. I added a little brown sugar purely for some texture as I love the crunch of the granules.

With the unusually intense blue skies and bright spring sunshine, this was a perfect light something for brunch. I hope you enjoy it too! (Don’t tell my mum…)