Our one-pan eggs have been on the menu in some form since the beginning. It’s changed a lot, starting as a humble shakshuka, then spending some time spicy with sausages and bacon. Today, it’s a lot lighter and a lot more simple, with plenty of spinach – not that you’d know it.

While the gochujang isn’t essential and can easily be substituted for chilli sauce, it’s a nice touch and you’ll find it in a lot of our recipes – it’s a sweet, spicy Korean paste made from fermented glutinous rice, but it’s got a lot more character than chilli sauce. Look at us, talking about adding depth and character like this is a proper recipe book. Oh, and now we’ve acknowledged you, the reader. Stop! This is getting too meta!

 Serves 2

Ingredients

• vegetable oil, for frying
• 2 medium brown onions, sliced
• 1 red pepper, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, sliced
• 800g canned chopped tomatoes
• 20g gochujang
• 50g spinach
• 4 medium or large eggs
• bread for toasting – your choice, we use sourdough
• sea salt and black pepper

Garnish

• sliced spring onion
• chilli
• coriander

Method

In a flat pan, heat a splash of oil at medium heat and add your onions, red pepper and garlic.

We’re going to sauté them, so keep them moving and turning until they begin to brown, then add the canned tomatoes, gochujang and salt and pepper.

Give the whole mix a stir, turn the heat to low and leave to cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. That’s a long time, especially if you’re cooking with gas or don’t have a lot of ventilation in your kitchen, so make sure to check on it.

Now 45 minutes older and wiser, you’ll find the tomatoes will have broken down and that your whole kitchen smells amazing. You’ll need to heat the grill (broiler) to medium now.

Turn the heat back up to medium, add the spinach, give it a stir, and break your eggs into the mix, then give the whole lot 3 minutes.

Now, put the whole pan under the grill to finish for 3–5 minutes. Keep an eye on it, which will probably be easy if your pan handle keeps you from closing the oven door like mine does. Oh, and put your bread in the toaster.

We’re looking for the whites of the eggs to be cooked, but the yolks to be runny. When you’re ready, put something down on your table or kitchen surface to rest the hot pan on and take the whole pan from the oven.

We garnish it with spring onion (scallion), sliced red chilli and coriander (cilantro), but you can add more spinach, or whatever you like really. Depending on how much you’ve made, this one is great served family-style with everyone helping themselves from the pan, but it’s just as good for one – and that way people won’t complain when you double-dip your toast. 

This is one of our absolute favourites, and also the only dish you can find on the menu at any time of day. We serve this one from as early as 6am to as late as midnight on some days, and will likely do so for years to come. It takes a really, really good picture, and considering it’s not much more complicated than beans on toast once you’ve prepped the cakes themselves – which you can do in advance – it looks pretty sophisticated. You’ve already impressed us.

Serves 3

Ingredients

• 250g sweet potato, peeled
• 25g harissa paste, plus extra for garnish
• 50g plain (all-purpose) flour – or gluten-free flour 3 tbsp water
• vegetable oil, for frying
• 2 medium or large eggs
• 2–3 tbsp yoghurt
• sea salt and black pepper

Method

Wash and grate your sweet potato like your life depends on it, on to a fresh, clean dish towel and wrap it up like a little parcel of joy.

Keeping your parcel together, squeeze tightly until the liquid drains out. Remember, you don’t want to dry your sweet potato out, just remove the excess moisture.

Place your freshly squeezed sweet potato into a large mixing bowl, adding the harissa paste, flour, water, salt and pepper. Mix it together.

Once mixed, scoop out a cupped handful of the mix and shape it into round, flat patties – you’ll make around six with the quantities here.

Cover the bottom of a shallow pan with oil, and heat it on the stove until it starts to sizzle. Carefully add your patties without splashing the oil, and then flip them every minute with a spatula or a fork. Meanwhile, bring a pan of water to the boil for your eggs.

As your patties start to brown, it’s time to get your plate ready. Mix some harissa with a dollop of the yoghurt and add to the plate.

Break your eggs into separate ramekins. With the heat turned down a little, stir the hot water to create a little hot whirlpool and carefully pour your eggs into it one by one – we don’t want to break the yolk on the rim of the ramekin being too cautious, but also don’t want to ‘dunk’ the eggs and have them hit the bottom. Remember, keep flipping your patties!

After 3 minutes, or 4 if you prefer a firmer yolk, scoop out your eggs using a slotted spoon and let them rest on a plate lined with paper towels.

Once your patties are crispy brown, scoop them from what oil is left and add them to the plate. Assemble your patties into a stack, with your eggs on top.

Enjoy. We find you get the best photo of these if you can catch the egg right as it splits and a sunset yolk rolls down the side, but we’ll leave that part to you. 

Years ago, we’d drive to Kempton Park Racecourse every other Tuesday for its antiques market to pick up bits and pieces for the restaurants. While the market ran all day, it’s no secret among regulars that the best bits would be long gone by 8am. So, going to Kempton meant a gloomy 4am start, and a drive from east London, through the sleepy city centre, past Chiswick and out to the racecourse with a fistful of cash – you’d be laughed at for even trying to pay with a card, or asking for a receipt. It’s like a Guy Ritchie movie out there. While it was a great place if you wanted a 19th-century stuffed circus bear, or a complete set of Princess Diana memorial lampshades, the best memories of Kempton were the greasy bacon sandwiches from a trailer, along with the blisteringly hot cups of builder’s tea served in those polystyrene cups seen almost nowhere else since the ’90s.

The antiques market still runs today, although we’ve not been in years. When we opened Liverpool Street Grind in 2019 and needed something on the menu that was quick, hot and probably going to kill you eventually, it was time for a reinterpretation. This is a lot boujie-er than the ones we had back in the day, but shhhh…

Serves 1

Ingredients

• oil, for frying
• 2 medium or large eggs
• 2 bacon rashers
• 1 brioche bun, halved
• Chopped chives to garnish

For the Grind Chilli Mayo

• 250g mayonnaise
• 50g gochujang

Method

Get your pans really hot before you fry the bacon. If you’re showing off, have a pan big enough, or just really hate washing up, you can probably do this in one pan, but we’d recommend two.

Break your eggs into one and drop your bacon into the other.

You want to keep your eggs moving, but let the bacon chill – not literally, mind you, it’s very hot. Flip it every couple of minutes.

Before your bacon gets crispy, add your bun halves to the pan to give them a bit of toasting.

Prepare your Grind Chilli Mayo. You can’t possibly fuck this up as there’s only one step – just mix them together.

Once your eggs are looking soft and scrambled, pile the bottom bun half – spread with chilli mayo – with your eggs, then chives, then bacon, before topping with your top bun half.

Enjoy now, or take it with you. These are great when they’re hot, and better than you’d expect when they’re cold.