A touch of luxe at breakfast and something very tasty to try with pineapple for later on…

Baby spinach and chives from the Healy’s farm this week. Yum Yum. The spinach didn’t last long at all, wolfed for lunch with some pan-fried chorizo and a poached egg. I earmarked the chives for breakfast. A member of the onion family they have a beautifully delicate flavour that isn’t enough on its own but is a brilliant foil to things like cream, cheese and eggs. Especially eggs, chives really love eggs. Mucho. I’d forgotten how much. I kept  things very simple and gently scrambled 3 organic eggs with a pinch of salt, plenty of black pepper and the merest  soupçon of heavy cream (the luxe factor). The trick with scrambled eggs is to have everything ready to go before you scramble because they only take a minute , literally.  I toasted some good bread from our local Craft bakery, made a glass of juice from the last of our blood oranges, had a pot of coffee ready to go so when the eggs were ready so was I. Breakfast heaven.

Scrambled eggs with fresh Wicklow chives

You’ll need:

3 large organic eggs

1/2 small bunch chives finely chopped (this works out at about 1 heaped tablespoon)

A dash of cream (or milk)

Butter

Salt and pepper

Optional extras: 1 heaped tablespoon Parmesan. – really not necessary and some would say de trop but for cheese freaks like Dan this really made it.

As I said, make sure you have everything (toast, tea/coffee etc) ready before you start. Break the eggs into a bowl, add the chives, salt, pepper and cream. Gently beat with a fork or whisk. You don’t need to go too crazy, just enough to mix everything together. Melt a knob of butter in a small pan over a medium heat. Add the eggs, and stir until they start to set. When this happens turn off the heat immediately as they’ll keep cooking with just the heat of the pan. You want them cooked but creamy. It’s a delicate balance. Take them off too soon and you get that icky not cooked factor but too late and you get rubbery eggs. Keep a close eye on things and you should be alright. Serve immediately.

It’s a tough time of year for fruit. Yes there’s still great citrus and we’ll be getting a shipment of lovely Waterford apples I wasn’t expecting next week but apart from kiwis and bananas that’s it. Even the pears are finished unless you want them from Argentina which I really don’t ta.

For a bit of variety  we buy the odd exotic at this time of year just to break things up before the summer stuff starts coming through. This week I got a consignment of pineapple which were in all our mediterranean selections. Gorgeous fresh and really good in juice, pineapple is also really killer roasted in the oven. Paul has long been a big fan of barbecued pineapple but I always thought we hadn’t quite cracked it so I started playing around a while ago. We’d always  marinated the pineapple in a bit of rum before barbecuing so I started there but I’ve been adding  some of my new fav spice – star anise,plus a cinnamon stick and some pepper corns. Long story short, the way forward is to bring the spices and rum to the boil so the alcohol really gets infused with the spices, add some brown sugar , let the pineapple sit in that for between 1 hr and overnight (more is more) then roast up the pineapple til golden. Vanilla ice-cream is all you need after that. You’d think that nothing could beat fresh pineapple but I really think this does. Well worth a go.

Roasted Pineapple

You’ll need:

1 Pineapple – peeled and cut into chunks

200ml rum – doesn’t have to be anything fancy

5 star anise

1 cinnamon quill

10 peppercorns

3 tablespoons of light muscovado sugar

To prepare the pineapple cut off the top and bottom then slice off the skin as you would an orange. Pineapples have a hard core that runs through the centre. It’s a paler colour than the rest of the flesh so it’s easy to see. I usually halve then quarter the fruit from top to bottom then cut off the bit with the core from each quarter. After that you just cut each quarter into chunks.

To prepare the marinade, pop the spices in a pot with the rum. Bring all this to the boil,simmer for a minute then turn off the heat. Let the rum cool down then pour it over the pineapple. Cover with tinfoil and put into the fridge for at least an hour.

When you’re ready to cook, heat the oven to Gas mark 6. Roast the pineapple covered first of all for half an hour then uncover, turn down the heat to gas mark 5 and continue cooking for another 20 – 25 minutes until the pineapple has turned golden brown and nearly all the liquid has evaporated leaving a light syrup on the fruit. Let things cool down a bit before you serve with some vanilla ice-cream. I have thought about adding a slice of toasted panetonne and even bought one but somehow the simplicity of just the fruit plus ice-cream seems enough but you might fancy giving it go.

Have a great weekend,

Sarah