Eggy bread.
Childhood nostalgia.

This is one of those dishes that my grandmother used to make. She made it very simple, no fancy extras or grandiloquent names. Just sweet and golden eggy bread, dusted with icing sugar.

Also known as French toast, pain perdu or poor knights.
Probably one of the simplest and cheapest breakfast/dessert creations. For the plain version you need some white bread, an egg, sugar, milk and Bob's your uncle.

But I suggest going all out, use cream instead of milk, just egg yolks in place of the whole egg and add flavouring according to your liking - vanilla, Amaretto, cinnamon, Calvados, Cassis, elderflower, orange zest and so on and so forth.

I played around with various versions, all of which included fat juicy strawberry slices.
Strawberry and pistachio paste, strawberry and salted caramel, strawberry and curd cheese.

I discovered that I'm not such a big fan of caramel but also, once a sticky gooey luscious caramel spread it melted into a sad pool of wet mass after a trip to the frying pan. It oozed out of the bread pocket making quite a mess on and off the plate.

Pistachio paste has the tendency to stick to your teeth a bit but the flavour was great. Could also use Nutella or frangipane. So many possibilities!

This month, my grandmother celebrated her 80th birthday.

Where would we be without grandmothers? They are like magical fairies I tell you.

Always cooking your favourite foods, 

letting you eat dessert before anything, 

saving all the best bits of cake for you,

having a pie or pancakes waiting for you on the stove when you get home from school (or work! now that we're a bit older), 

always making sure you never run out of coins for an ice cream in case you ever needed one, 

chasing off all the creepy crawlies staring at you in the darkest corner, 

turning her sitting room into a makeshift fortress for you to play in :D

Thank you, granny, I'm so lucky to have you in my life.

 

Strawberry and curd cheese eggy bread


2 slices of toast
1 egg, separated
3 tbsp cream
vanilla paste
sugar
50g curd cheese (can substitute with ricotta)
9 to 12 small strawberries


Whisk egg white with a fork until it is no longer lumpy, bubbles start to form.
Mix it with curd cheese and sweeten to your liking.

Whisk egg yolk with a tablespoon of sugar and a pinch of vanilla paste until foaming. Stir in the cream.

Now take your toast slices, spread the curd cheese mixture on the slices, top with strawberries (when using smaller ones, use them whole) or strawberry slices (cut larger strawberries into 1cm thick slices, eating the leftovers as you go along). Press toast slices together, making a sandwich.
Dip the sandwich in the egg yolk mixture, turning once, letting it soak it all up.
Fry in butter until golden and crispy on both sides.