Sunday Breakfast with Corinne Grant
Ellie Parker
Corinne Grant is a labels lady. The mustard must be Keen's. The pastry, Pampas; the sausages, Jonathan's. And there is only one Worcestershire sauce and that's Holbrooks!
‘I'm pedantic with ingredients, but slapdash with my cooking,' explains Corinne.
But there was certainly nothing slapdash about the feast Corinne prepared, especially for the Breakfast Out team.
Ingenious and delicious, Corinne presented us with YouTube Eggs served with homemade baked beans and miniature sausage rolls. A dollop of ‘Fahey's mum's special plum sauce' added the final touch.
Now, the YouTube Eggs need some explanation. Corinne, like the rest of us, was unsure how to cook a perfectly poached egg. This is where YouTube came to the rescue.
The Cool Cook's - or search "The Simple Way to Poach an Egg" - live demonstration of how to poach an egg is both amusing and instructive. The Cool Cook suggests plopping your egg into the swirl of simmering, salted water, and then taking the pan off the heat for ten minutes, by which time your egg will be done. Corinne's experimental YouTube Egg actually worked (though we decided five minutes probably would have been ideal)!
Corinne's homemade baked beans are the perfect comfort food. By adding smoked bacon bones to the beans, she had the whole house smelling deliciously smoky when we arrived. Her special recipe includes soaked beans, onion, Worcestershire sauce, Keen's mustard powder, tinned tomatoes and smoked bacon bones.
‘I forgot to soak the cannellini beans overnight, so I had to get up at 6 am to put them in some water!' she admits.
As for her miniature sausage rolls, well, what can I say? They should be on every breakfast menu. Why stop at plain-old brekkie sausages when you can have the little buggers wrapped up in pastry? Corinne's trick is to use a combination of Jonathon's pork and beef sausage mince, along with shredded zucchini, cheddar cheese, egg, breadcrumbs, parsley and onions. Wrapped up in pastry and baked till golden, these little rolls are a brilliant breakfast side dish.
‘Fahey's mum's plum sauce is delicious with everything, especially these sausage rolls. It has just the right amount of spice. Obviously, the recipe is a family secret!'