Debora says: In the mid-90s when I was newly engaged to Séan, he took me to this little restaurant in Stoke Newington for dinner. The exterior of the Fox Reformed was painted a dark, wine red, and the windows were filled with a jumble of corks from bottles past. Inside, the room was long and narrow, with a bar on the left where regulars chatted with the owners, Robbie and Carole. A fire crackled in the grate, and at two or three tables people were playing backgammon. 

The menu never really changed – salads, gratins, daubes, steaks. That first evening, and almost every time I went after that, I had the smoked haddock in tarragon cream to start. I have dressed it up here with an egg and some cheese, so you could serve it as a brunch or lunch dish on its own if you wanted, but I have included the very simple and very good original as an alternative, below. When Carole Richards gave me the recipe just before she died, she included the instruction, ‘Serve with agreeable bread to mop up.’ And I always do.

Serves 2

Ingredients

• a little soft butter for the ramekins
• 170ml double cream
• 2 tablespoons roughly chopped fresh tarragon leaves
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• a few grinds of black pepper
• 170g smoked haddock, uncooked, skinned and cut into roughly 2cm chunks
• 2 eggs
• 20g Gruyère cheese, finely grated

To serve

• agreeable bread, or toast

Method

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Lightly butter two 250ml ovenproof dishes or generous ramekins. Pour the cream into a pan with the tarragon and bring to a simmer. Reduce until thickened slightly, then remove from the heat and stir in the mustard and black pepper.

Heap half the haddock into one of the dishes, making a small well in the centre of it. Break one of the eggs into the middle – you want it to nestle in the centre of the fish. Pour half the tarragon cream over the top and sprinkle on half the cheese. Repeat with the second ramekin. Cover each dish tightly with foil and place them on a baking sheet. Heat up the grill. 

Place the dishes in the oven and bake for 5 minutes. Remove the foil and put the dishes under a hot grill for a minute or so, until bubbly and golden. Serve immediately with agreeable bread or toast, to dip into the still-soft egg yolks.

Debora says: Like all sane people, I love eggs benedict. But I seldom want to make eggs benedict, particularly for a crowd, particularly in the morning, which is exactly when you normally want eggs benedict. So I came up with this recipe, which is a strata – a sort of savoury bread-and-butter pudding – which has all the delicious qualities of eggs benedict without the perilous activity of attempting hollandaise sauce with a hangover. 

As an added benefit, it’s even better if you prepare it the day before and then just put it into the oven while you’re pottering about in your nightie, waking up, drinking Berocca, making coffee. I add spinach here, to make a sort of benedict/florentine hybrid, but you can leave the spinach out if you want. It is enough as it is, but rashers of crisp bacon and beautiful sausages are irresistible, to me at least.

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

• a little softened butter, for greasing the dish
• 6–8 white muffins, about 500–600g, slightly stale
• a couple of handfuls of baby spinach, about 70g
• 4 thick slices of ham, about 250g,
• roughly torn into approximately 3cm pieces
• 120g Gruyère cheese, grated

For the ‘hollandaise’ sauce

• 160ml white wine vinegar
• 1 small shallot, diced, about 20g
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1 bay leaf
• 8 eggs, lightly beaten
• 450ml double cream
• 160ml single cream
• a few fine gratings of lemon zest
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

First, make the custard. Put the vinegar into a small pan with the shallot, peppercorns and bay leaf, and simmer until the vinegar is reduced to about 4 tablespoons. Let it cool. Whisk together the eggs and creams, strain in the cooled vinegar and gently stir it all together. Grate over a little lemon zest, being careful not to add any bitter white pith, then stir in the lemon juice and mustard. Season with 1 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.

Lightly butter an ovenproof dish (I use a Pyrex dish, 28 × 28 × 8cm, but any ceramic or enamelware gratin dish of approximately those dimensions will do). Split the muffins and roughly tear each piece into quarters. If they aren’t stale, toss the torn bread on to a baking sheet and bake it at 160°C for 10 minutes, then remove it from the oven and leave it to cool completely.

Put the pieces of muffin, spinach and ham into the oven dish and mix it all together (with your beautifully clean hands, ideally) so everything is evenly distributed. Slowly add the egg mixture, pouring it evenly over the strata, gently tilting the dish to make sure it reaches every corner. Gently press with the back of a spoon. Cover with foil (you need to cook it under foil for a bit later, so better to use it now than to waste cling film), and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or ideally overnight.

Remove the strata from the fridge 30 minutes before you want to bake it and spoon over any of the egg mixture that hasn’t soaked into the bread. Put the dish on a baking sheet to catch any drips. 

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Scatter over the cheese. If you didn’t cover the strata with foil before, do it now. Bake it for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and continue to cook it for a further 20–30 minutes, until the top has crisped up a little and is turning golden. Let it cool for 5–10 minutes before serving.

Notes

You can also add some halved cherry tomatoes to the mixture, if you’re some kind of health freak.

Debora says: I always slightly kick the furniture – metaphorically if not actually – when I have a cold and someone suggests chicken soup as the cure for all ills. Who is going to make this soup? Do the shopping and the preparing, and the general long, slow simmering of the soup? Wash the pan? The problem with invalid food is that it is often beyond the scope of the invalid. But the pestilent can’t live on weak tea and hasty toast alone. 

When I am feeling sick or just tired, I often order in from Devran, a Turkish restaurant along the road from us, mostly because their food tastes like home cooking – they even have a casserole of the day. This soup is my version of their delicious and restorative lamb soup, which is balm to body and soul.

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

For the soup

• 1kg lamb shoulder, cut into 3cm cubes
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2–3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 medium onions, about 350g, diced
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 tablespoons biber salçasi 
• 800ml lamb, chicken or vegetable stock, or water
• 1 × 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• ½ teaspoon pul biber, or a good pinch of chilli flakes
• a large bunch of fresh parsley, about 20g, tough stalks removed and discarded, leaves and soft stalks chopped
• 2 red peppers, halved, deseeded and cut into 1cm slices
• 4 cloves of garlic, halved, green germ removed, and very finely chopped
• 2 × 400g tins of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• a small bunch of fresh coriander, about 15g, tough stalks removed and discarded, leaves and soft stalks chopped

To finish

• about 160g Greek yoghurt
• 12–14 fresh mint leaves, chopped, or ½ teaspoon dried mint
• a pinch of salt

Method

Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper over the lamb and mix it all together with your hands so that it is evenly seasoned. Warm the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed casserole or saucepan over a medium–high heat – you may not need all the oil, depending on how much fat remains on the lamb. Brown the lamb.

You’ll need to do this in batches, so as not to crowd the pan. As pieces of the meat are well browned, remove them to a plate and continue until all the lamb is cooked. 

When you have browned the meat, pour all but 3 tablespoons of fat from the pan (save it for frying bread or eggs – thank me later). Lower the heat, tip the onions into the pan with the bay leaf and sauté gently, stirring from time to time, until they are beautifully soft, about 20 minutes. Add the peppers and garlic and stir for 3–4 minutes, then stir in the chickpeas. Add the cumin and coriander and stir for a minute, then add the biber salçasi or pepper paste. 

Stir for a couple of minutes, then return the meat to the pan with any of the juices which have accumulated on the plate. Add the stock, tomatoes, vinegar, oregano and pul biber or chilli flakes. Bring to a very gentle simmer, then partially cover and let it blip away softly for an hour. Remove the lid, taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary, and simmer uncovered for 20–30 minutes, until the soup is thickened slightly and the lamb is very tender. 

Remove from the heat, fish out the bay leaf, and stir in the parsley and coriander. In a small bowl, stir together the yoghurt, mint and salt. Serve the soup in warmed bowls, with some of the minted yoghurt spooned over the top.

Notes

Many Turkish recipes use an intense red pepper paste, biber salçasi. If you can’t get hold of it, you can substitute a couple of jarred, drained flame-grilled red peppers – about 120g – whizzed together with 2 tablespoons of concentrated tomato purée, 2 teaspoons of paprika, ¼ teaspoon of cayenne and a pinch of cinnamon into a smooth paste. You can keep it sealed in a jar in the fridge for a couple of weeks and use it to perk up all manner of soups and stews – it is particularly good with aubergines.