We love smoked fish and egg recipes. One of my favourites is smoked salmon in creamy scrambled eggs and Brian makes a mean kedgeree with some extra favourite ingredients – namely bacon, lime juice and coriander (instead of the traditional parsley). You could think of it as curried English breakfast.

According to Wikipedia, “Kedgeree is thought to have originated with the Indian rice-and-bean or rice-and-lentil dish khichri, traced back to 1340 or earlier. It is widely believed that the dish was brought to the United Kingdom by returning British colonials who had enjoyed it in India and introduced it to the UK as a breakfast dish in Victorian times, part of the then fashionable Anglo-Indian cuisine”. 

If you wanted to go a bit Thai I suppose you could try using coconut milk instead of cream. We’ve not tried that yet but if you do please let us know how it goes.

Ingredients (serves about eight)

These quantities are very approximate and can be varied (or omitted) to suit your taste.

• Approx 500gms smoked haddock.
• Two onions (and/or leeks).
• Two handfuls of frozen peas (and/or broad beans).
• About half a handful of raisins.
• Three or four hard boiled eggs.
• Whatever you want in the way of rashers of smokey streaked bacon (optional).
• Creme fraiche/single cream.
• One lime.
• Bunch of coriander (or parsley if you prefer).
• One or two spring onions.
• Cooking oil.
• Spices of your choice (we use curry powder, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, coriander powder, black pepper and turmeric).
• 400mls basmati rice (we cook with 600mls of water on full power in a microwave for 15 minutes).

Method

• Hard boil eggs, immerse in cold water and peel.
• Poach haddock in half an inch of water skin side up for about five minutes. Keep the water. The skin is easier to peel off when cold. Flake and check for bones.
• Grill bacon and cut into one cm pieces.
• Cook the rice.

All of the above can be done beforehand.

• Fry onions in oil until translucent. Throw in peas, raisins and spices with half lime juice and half the bunch of coriander chopped. Stir for a few minutes.
• Add flaked fish, rice, bacon, poached haddock water and cream. Stir and leave over low heat for perhaps twenty minutes to blend flavours and heat through.
• Just before serving, add eggs (cut in half) and stir in lightly, just to give them time to heat up)
• Before serving, add finely chopped spring onions and the rest of lime juice and chopped coriander.

This keeps well in the fridge and can be reheated on the hob or in the microwave. It also freezes well (apart from the eggs), in which case a bit of extra water will be needed.