New Make/Bake 36 - Smoky bean, bacon & eggy bread bake

M loves comfort food, anything stodgy is always a winner for him. However he has been reluctant to try one of my personal favourite comfort foods, eggy bread, otherwise known as french toast. One of the best foods when served piping hot, and covered with cinnamon sugar and jam - yummy! Apparently he thinks it's weird and that egg shouldn't go with sweet things. To try and tempt him into trying it I decided to try and make a savoury eggy bread!

I found this recipe in one of the BBC Good Food mag and it looked very tasty - as always I had to give it a tweak!

Smoky bean, bacon & eggy bread bake

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 3 x 400g cans haricot bean , drained and rinsed- I only had 2 so I added a tin of Cannellin beans
• 500g passata
• ½ tbsp sweet smoked paprika
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp dark muscovado sugar
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 200g bacon lardons
• 5 eggs
• 125ml milk
• 10 slices white bread , crusts removed and halved to make triangles 
• 100g grated cheddar cheese ( comfort food is always better with cheese!)

 Method

1. Heat oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7. Tip the beans into a large baking dish with the passata, paprika, vinegar, sugar and Worcestershire sauce. Season and mix well. Scatter the lardons over the top, cover with foil and bake for 30 mins.
2. Remove the beans from the oven, take off the foil and stir well. Return to the oven, uncovered, for 10 mins to crisp up the bacon. You can now cool and chill the beans for up to 2 days, or freeze for up to 3 months. Just defrost and warm through before continuing.
3. Whisk the eggs and milk with some seasoning. Dip the bread triangles into the egg mix, then layer them over the surface of the beans. Pour the rest of the egg over the bread, sprinkle with cheese and cook for 20 mins, or until the bread is puffed and the cheese is golden. 

M thought it was lovely, the beans perhaps needed a bit longer to soften as they had quite a bite to them. I also might play a bit more with the flavours as it wasn't a strong enough BBQ flavour which I think would have been lovely. I think eggy bread with jam is the next step :)

Make/Bake 20 - BBQ beans with mashed potato tops

Seeing as it's my birthday in a few weeks ( my 29th  plus 1 as I refer to it) I want to lose a few pounds to either fit into a lovely new dress or into an old one I've not worn in ages!

As part of this new healthy eating kick I'm going to mostly making lower calorie dinners and lunches and trying to eat less crisps and more fruit and veg. Today's new make/bake was a healthy meal I found on BBC Good Food -  BBQ beans with mashed potato tops

It's difficult to get M to eat some vegetables unless they are very, very well hidden, Celery being one of them! As this recipe had a BBQ flavour I thought it was bound to be onto a good thing as M is a total sucker for anything hickory smoked and it was probably going to help hide the veggies!

I found the recipe easy to follow and was really quick which is always a bonus for a Monday evening. I tasted the sauce as I went and found it tasted of tomato rather than BBQ so I added Smoked Paprika to give it a deeper flavour.

One of the reasons I wanted to try this recipe was the mash. I always seem to end up with lumpy mash but today I follows some of Delia's advice and left my potatoes to steam dry for a few minutes before using my potato ricer and then mixing in milk and cream cheese. Other than the fact I didn't think 300g of potato made enough mash for us, it was lovely. The cream cheese (I used a light version to reduce the calories) was a great addition as it made the mash really smooth and creamy. I also sprinkled on some grated low-fat cheddar before popping it under the grill until the cheese had melted and served it with left-over Ham, Cheese and Chive Bread. 

It was really tasty, although M found it a bit bland. I think it was because there wasn't enough meat for his liking! I think it still is missing something to make it have a decent BBQ flavour so may have to play around a bit. I also think it would better if the beans were cooked slower and longer but not too bad for under 400kcal!