Lekker Brekker Monday: An easy, cheesy, breezy scramble

Things don’t always work out according to plan. And I don’t mind owning up to it when it happens. Which is not often. About 99% of my recipes, as thought out and written, and then executed, turn out well. This means that you know that if I write and publish a recipe, it has been tested and turned out as intended. When it doesn’t go well, you usually don’t hear about it.

This one – built around eggs, chiefly – did go well. But when I got up on Sunday morning and made coffee, I then set about making the breakfast I had planned the day before. 

What was this sedentary Sunday-morning repast, you may ask?

Peppermint Crisp muffins. That’s what. Here’s what went wrong: I miscalculated how much chocolate there is in a standard 49g bar of Peppermint Crisp. And I used six of them. On reflection, there must have been a fair weight of chocolate in there – enough to weigh it down and throw the batter out of balance.

This means that I can now recalculate it and hope that they come out next time. But what happened on Sunday was that the chocolate in the mixture gathered together and melted, forming a rich, oozy pool of chocolatey deliciousness in the middle of the “muffins”.

Yes, you see where I’m going. These were virtually chocolate fondants. The muffins collapsed. We had a couple of them as breakfast dessert. Yummy. So good. But I could not in all conscience pass them off to you as the muffins they had been intended to be.

Defeated (for now), I cast around the room. There were five eggs in the egg basket on top of the fridge. (Yes, we keep our eggs in a wire egg basket, which we keep on top of the fridge.)

There was an onion. There was Cheddar cheese. And there was butter. (Obviously – there’s always butter in my household. I look for special offers and buy it in bulk. Butter freezes perfectly. We do that with bacon special offers too. Butter + bacon = living.)

But here’s the thing. The balance here is tilted towards the cheese, not the eggs. I used two cups of Cheddar (when grated) and only five eggs. Because that’s how many eggs I had.

And the onion plays an important role too: it needs to be caramelised, golden and sweet. Like a Sunday morning.

Tony’s easy, cheesy eggs, cheese and onion scramble

(Serves 2)

Ingredients

3 Tbsp butter, and then 3 more (you’ll see), and then more again for the toast

1 onion, peeled, sliced in half and sliced thinly

5 eggs

2 cups grated Cheddar cheese

4 slices of bread, toasted and buttered

Salt and black pepper

2 chives

Method

Slice the onion, grate the cheese and have the eggs and butter to hand. Toast the bread and butter it.

Melt 3 Tbsp butter in a pan and add the sliced onions. Sauté, stirring now and then, until golden brown and smelling sweetly enticing.

Add the 3 extra Tbsp butter, let it melt, then add the eggs, while moving the mixture around with a spatula, and then immediately add the cheddar, stirring until it has melted and everything has combined. Move the mixture around until it is cooked but still moist.

Spoon the scramble onto the buttered toast. Season with salt and pepper. Top with chopped chives. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023

Order Tony’s book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.