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Eggs, avocado, bacon, bagels – this roll-call of delicious ingredients shows why brunch is by far the best meal of the day.

The Little Book of Brunch features a selection of the world’s best ever brunch recipes, ranging from Middle Eastern Shakshuka to traditional English Savouries, from simple Baked Eggs to indulgent Brioche French Toast. Whether you’re in the mood to make something sweet or savoury, speedy or slow, these easy and adaptable recipes are everything a meal should be, whatever the time of day.

About the Authors

Caroline Craig has written for the Guardian and is the co-author of The Little Book of Lunch, The Cornershop Cookbook, and The Kew Gardens Children’s Cookbook. Her maternal family have been fruit farmers and wine producers in Provence for generations. A childhood spent gobbling home-grown tomatoes and peaches left her with little choice but to shape her life around delicious food and cooking for friends and family.

Sophie Missing is a writer and editor who started her career in publishing at Hodder & Stoughton and Penguin. She has written for the Guardian, the Observer, and MUNCHIES, and is the co-author of two previous cookbooks, The Little Book of Lunch and The Cornershop Cookbook. She lives in London.

Introduction

The Little Book of Brunch is a collection of recipes for what many consider to be the best meal of the day.

But what’s the deal with brunch – why is the breakfast-lunch composite so increasingly popular?

Brunch isn’t about shoehorning another meal into the day. As two people who write about food and love cooking, we’re pretty keen eaters, but even we draw the line at having breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner (at least, not on a regular basis – major holidays excepted). But brunch we do, and often too. For us, it almost always takes the place of both breakfast and lunch, and while of course it’s lovely to go out for the occasion sometimes, given the simplicity of many of the dishes on offer (avocado, coffee, eggs, toast) we often end up wondering what feasts we could have conjured up at home for the same price – and without having to scramble to secure a table.

Brunch is about simple, unpretentious yet delicious fare. It’s a meal that allows you to gorge on bread without being judged (who’s to know you’re not doing a 10K later?), to be able to cook food for those you love without spending or slaving too much, or simply to treat yourself to a good, nourishing, homemade meal, even if you missed breakfast.

Unlike, say, Sunday lunch, a weekend brunch holds all the promise of the day(s) ahead. It can provide the stomach-lining foundation for afternoons and nights out, or the carb-laced stupor for hours spent lolling on the sofa.

The timing of the meal itself is perfect. If it’s the morning after a ‘Late One’ (we use the word ‘morning’ loosely here), anyone you are cooking for will be grateful that they are not expected either to wake up or come over first thing. Brunch always perfectly coincides with raging hunger pangs: after all, hangovers wait for no lunch.

Brunch can incorporate classic breakfast ingredients (eggs, sausages, toast), or be a riff on something you might think firmly lunch or dinner territory (an Indian breakfast curry, pizza or a fluffy jacket potato, say).

It can be as fancy or frugal as you like: you can splash out on sushi-grade salmon and invest the time in curing it yourself – this costs about £6, so is not prohibitively expensive, but still a treat and it sounds lavish, doesn’t it? Or you can spend £2 on tinned beans and jazz them up with spices to make a ful medames in 20 minutes.

It can be boozy or abstemious: you can crack out the cocktails and let brunch segue seamlessly into dinner, or you can have an enjoyable break from everything before continuing your day.

It’s almost endlessly adaptable: there are as many different ingredients you can add to your scrambled eggs as there are schools of thought on how best to cook them. Don’t have any coriander? Use something else – or leave it out. Have a carrot you want to use up? Go ahead and grate it into your potato pancakes. Brunch is the meal when you can get away with anything.

It’s also accessible; with the exception of a very few recipes involving curing, slow overnight cooking or proving, which do require some pre-planning, most of the recipes in this book can be made spontaneously – our favourite way to cook.

Brunch can be a delightfully enjoyable way of catching up with those you love. Cooking brunch for friends and family is entertaining without the stress, expense or copious amounts of wine that a three-course dinner can involve. At brunch, people are generally happiest with coffee, juice, eggs and frequently replenished stacks of buttered toast. But equally, if you wish, you can spend a little extra on treat items. With a chunk of ’nduja sausage, some salmon or a posh sourdough loaf, often a little goes a long way. It all depends on the sort of affair you’re planning.

There’s the hours-long Saturday morning brunch we have every couple of months with a group of friends, where we take turns to have people over. At these leisurely meals we might eat rhubarb compote, yoghurt and a little granola in small glasses to start, followed by boiled eggs, toast and a bit of cured ham if we’re feeling flush. This brunch might end in a gentle stroll through a local park – though it might just as easily descend into drunken chaos and impromptu karaoke.

A weekday brunch is a wholly different affair, by necessity speedier and involving fewer components. It might be tinned chickpeas sautéed with some green veg and topped with a fried egg, or some avocado squidged onto sourdough toast, seasoned with lemon juice, sea salt and chilli flakes (forgive us this cliché; it does taste good). Whatever we eat, this type of brunch is a much-needed moment of peaceful enjoyment savoured between whatever else is going on during the day. This versatility is what can make brunch the most appealing of meals; it’s a moveable feast.

You can, of course, also cook the recipes in this book at any time of day, which brings us back to the fundamental joy of brunch: there really are no rules. Whether you’re cooking for yourself, your housemates, family, partner or friends, when in doubt keep it simple – or wing it.

The history of brunch

Many people think of brunch as a modern invention – the more cynical might see it as an excuse for restaurants to charge a tenner for two tepid poached eggs. But the word was first used in an 1895 article in the (unsurprisingly now defunct) British magazine Hunter’s Weekly: ‘Brunch,’ journalist Guy Beringer wrote, ‘is cheerful, sociable and inciting. It puts you in a good temper … it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.’

These days we are more likely to use our toast to scoop up shakshuka than the potted pigeon from hunters’ brunch banquets of yore, but the spirit of the thing remains the same. A good brunch does put you in a happy mood; it can be the most sociable of meals. But there is also something in the very act of carving out the time for it that does sweep away mortal worries – if only for a brief period.

Dishes from early twentieth-century British ‘savoury’ courses were traditionally served at the end of a meal as a precursor to the cheese course, and often celebrated what are now staple brunch items: kippers with bread and butter, Welsh rabbit etc. We’ve included a chapter of these recipes as they are definitely due for a revival.

Brunches of the world

More than any other meal, perhaps, brunch is a multicultural mash-up. We are extremely lucky to have access to more specialist ingredients from around the world than ever before and, what’s more, the knowledge of what to do with them. Gone are the days when olive oil could only be bought over the chemist’s counter. But we’re also becoming more open to the delicious, usually savoury, breakfast dishes enjoyed in many countries outside the Western world. It might feel a stretch to eat a spicy potato curry for breakfast (personally, we’re very into it) but serve it at brunch and no one will bat an eyelid.

Condiments are key

There are times in posh restaurants when you’re made to feel like a savage for requesting some ketchup. Of all the meals, brunch is probably the occasion when condiments and seasoning are not only welcome but absolutely necessary. A crucial part of the joy of the thing is customising whatever you’re eating, whether it’s a liberal shake of hot sauce on your eggs or a sprinkle of capers on your bagel. There’s nothing so disappointing as being made a bacon sandwich and then having to politely endure the devastating news that your hosts don’t have your beloved brown sauce. Don’t be that person: hoard sauces, relishes and jams, even if you don’t use them that often. They keep for ages – you’re probably given a few every Christmas, and if you are light-fingered, you can procure mini jars from hotel buffet breakfasts. Laying out an array of condiments on your table – or on a tray in proper B&B style – takes 30 seconds but makes it look like you’ve put on a real spread.

Here are our favourite squeezes, sprinkles and spreads:

Sea salt and a fully loaded pepper grinder (this is also the time to crack out any novelty items you might have lurking in your fridge like, say, smoked salt – brunch is a great way to clear out your cupboards)
Dried chilli flakes
Chilli sauce (Encona, Sriracha, Cholula, Frank’s, El Yucateco Green Habanero, Tabasco … we have literally about 20 different hot sauces on the go at any one time)
Honey (if you can, try to get one that is local and not made from a blend of honeys)
Marmite (or, you know, Vegemite)
Peanut butter
Tomato ketchup
HP sauce
Colman’s English mustard
Dijon and/or wholegrain mustard
Assorted pickles and chutneys
Jam (apricot, raspberry)
Marmalade
Cream cheese (obligatory for bagels)
Mayonnaise (see here for how to make your own)

Cook’s notes

Unless otherwise stated

All eggs are medium.
All black pepper is freshly ground.
We use Maldon sea salt.

Perfect Eggs

Brunch doesn’t have to contain eggs, but it often does.

At least with eggs, unlike meat, there’s a ceiling of around £3 for free range and organic. Eggs bought from a farm shop are the bucolic dream, but we also like to treat ourselves to Clarence Court eggs (available from major supermarkets), which have a vibrant orange yolk.

Unless otherwise indicated in a recipe, we use medium eggs and keep them at room temperature – storing them in the fridge will affect the cooking times given in the recipes. Obviously, use whatever size eggs you have, but bear in mind that the cooking times should be slightly longer when, say, boiling a large egg.

Contents

Contents

List of Recipes

About the Book

About the Authors

Introduction

Perfect Eggs