'turkish eggs'

I've now been to Peter Gordon's restaurant/cafe/bar Kopapa in London's Covent Garden a few times and the food and service is always great. It's not a stuffy place, really straight forward but the food and cocktails on offer are really exciting without being pretentious or hugely over-priced, this is an incredibly rare thing in London. One dish that has stayed with me since the first time I tried it was their version of an egg dish from a related cafe in Istanbul, Turkey. The combination of thick yogurt, soft poached eggs and spicy rich butter is heavenly. Seriously - this is a wonderful breakfast.



Ingredients Serves 2
1 small clove garlic, peeled and crushed
150g thick Greek yoghurt
25ml extra virgin olive oil
25g unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon dried chilli flakes (adjust this according to your tastes, you could also use some hot smoked paprika or cayenne instead.)
stem of fresh dill or flat parsley, shredded
4 eggs

1. Briefly whisk together the garlic, yoghurt and half the olive oil before setting to one side.
2. In a small pan cook the butter until it just starts to brown. You don't want it to burn just colour slightly. Remove the pan from the heat then add the chilli flakes, paprika or cayenne. Add the remaining oil and the dill. Put to one side while you poach the eggs.
3. Poach the eggs using whatever method you prefer. I have a suspicion that crispy edged, but still runny fried eggs would also work well here but I've ever tried so do what ever you fancy.
4. Divide the yogurt between two bowls, put two poached eggs in each bowl then spoon over the spicy butter and oil mix. Serve with some thick sliced, toasted bread or some warmed fat bread. 

butter, olive oil, chilli and herbs

yogurt mixed with olive oil and crushed garlic

the finished dish 

I've entered this dish in the Breakfast Club Challenge with A Kick at the Pantry and Fuss Free Flavours.

birthday cake

So I recently had my birthday which isn't something I normally make much of a fuss about but it is a great reason to indulge in awesome food and drink. This year it was fairly low key but did involve celebrating with loved ones by drinking wine over-looking London, enjoying San Sebastian style pinchos in Soho and an awesome brunch of Turkish eggs at Kopapa in Seven Dials, Covent Garden. We also managed to fit in some tasty snacks down on the SouthBank at the yummy food market there and tea and tarts at the cafe at the Liberty department store. It was a proper foodies birthday. I felt spoilt and utterly indulged. To top the weekend off we decided to make my birthday cake rather than buying one. Nothing beats a special cake, homemade with love. The recipe is based on the same yummy chocolate fudge cake recipe I have used for some of my cupcakes (I doubled the quantities) but it was made even more special by filling the centre with rum cream and covered in a salted caramel buttercream frosting and some crumbled malteasers (whoppers). This cake was just grown up enough and truly rocked. Sorry about the blurry pictures, I blame the cocktails!