I made these bacon and egg cases for a special brunch recently. Im not much of a chef, but often keen to try out new recipes. These bacon and egg tarts were well received, but did take a bit of effort, so I recommend making these on a Sunday morning, when you have spare time to spend in the kitchen.

I made the pastry cases from scratch using wholemeal flour, but you could save a bit of time and effort by using store pastry, and should still taste great. This was also the first time for me making pastry, so it turned out a bit crumbly. Perhaps this was due to the wholemeal flour?

The following recipe is from Taste.com.au, pictures are my own.

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 1 cup wholemeal plain flour
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 125g butter, chopped
• 2 to 3 tablespoons chilled water
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 5 rashers bacon, fat trimmed, chopped
• 80g baby spinach leaves, trimmed
• 1/4 cup thickened cream (see tip)
• 4 eggs
• 1 egg yolk, whisked

Method

Place flours and butter in a food processor. Process until mixture resembles fine crumbs.

Add 2 tablespoons of chilled water and process until pastry comes together, adding more water if necessary. Turn pastry onto a lightly-floured surface. Knead for 1 minute or until smooth. Wrap in baking paper. Refrigerate for 15 minutes or until firm.

Preheat oven to 190°C. Line 2 large baking trays with baking paper. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add onion and bacon. Cook, stirring, for 4 to 5 minutes or until onion tender. Add spinach. Cook for 1 minute until just wilted. Remove from heat. Stir in cream. Season with pepper.

Divide pastry into 4 equal portions. Roll out each portion between 2 sheets of baking paper to an 18cm circle. Place pastry circles on baking trays. Spoon bacon mixture into the centre of each, leaving a 2cm border. Fold up pastry edges, pinching pastry and leaving half the bacon mixture exposed.

Crack 1 egg into each tart. Combine egg yolk and 1 tablespoon cold water. Brush pastry with egg mixture. Bake for 20 minutes or until egg is just cooked. Season with pepper.

Ikea; an unlikely source of brunch

Isn’t it every guys dream to spend at least one day of your weekend at Ikea? Well, not really in most cases but Ikea does brunch so it was enough to convince me to endure a trip to the shops to look at Kitchens and other interior decorating focussed doodads.

I have to say it is a bit disconcerting to buy food from a furniture manufacturer but I think Ikea actually sells the cheapest cooked breakfast you can buy in Sydney. There is a small set of options to choose from but everything on the breakfast menu is less than a fiver.

Options on the menu

You can either go down the sweets path with the dual pancakes for $3.95 or the savoury path which is a cut down version of the more traditional cooked English. I went down the savoury path which led me to even more options, the vegetarian breakfast and the hot breakfast. I managed to obtain both of these breakfasts for the princely sum of $5.50.

The vegetarian came in at $2.50 and consisted of scrambled eggs, bakes beans, hash browns and half a tomato.

The Hot Breakfast was the meat eaters option and consisted of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and a half tomato and cost $2.95.

The ingredients on the breakfasts were highly varied in quality. The hash browns and sausages were pretty tasty I have to say even though they were highly generic. One of the tomatoes presented to our party was not ripe and green and the eggs were being brought out to be served in massive trays that looked like platters full of tofu.

I also bought bottomless coffee which was good value quantity wise but some of the most terrible tasting coffee in existence.

So Ikea, good for those on a brunch budget. One breakfast isn’t enough if you have a hearty appetite but it is easy to scale up for a low price. If you are not very tolerant of shopping and other shoppers, avoid this place on the weekends as it gets pretty intense inside the store.

The cafe/restaurant actually opens half an hour before the store does so you can fuel up before you hit the showroom floor without losing any valuable browsing time. If you finish up your shopping and you’re hungry again, then there are $1 hot dogs for sale as you get through the check outs.

All in all, you cannot complain about Ikea’s interpretation of brunch, it is amazingly cheap and where else could you find a cooked breakfast like this for such a low price, check it out.
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