Brixton Brunch: Plantain Pancakes and Spicy Scrambled Eggs

By Miss South

Every so often you have a Sunday morning where you require extra fortification. Those are the mornings you curse the fact that The Duck Egg and Negril are so good that you can’t actually guarantee getting a seat for their excellent brunches, so I thought you could do with a recipe in your repetoire in advance.

Spicy scrambled eggs with tomatoes, peppers and chillies are a well loved dish in Nigeria and are often served on the side of some fried plantains, but I wanted to make this dish more morning style and decided to turn the fried plantain into thick American style pancakes you can stack as high as you can eat. Made from scratch it’ll still take less time than getting dressed and queuing for a table…

Plantain Pancakes with Spicy Scrambled Eggs: serves two

• 100g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• pinch salt
• 1 large egg
• 15g melted butter
• 150ml milk
• 200g mashed plantain

• 4 large eggs
• 2 spring onions
• 300g cherry tomatoes
• half red pepper
• sprig thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
• 1 chilli (or use hot sauce)
• hot sauce to taste

Peel and roughly chop one plantain. Bring to the boil and cook until tender. Drain and mash well until smooth. You can double the amount and freeze the remainder for next time.

To make the pancakes, put the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet in another and then mix together, adding in the mashed plantain at the end. The batter should be just loose enough to spoon easily, but will look a bit lumpy. Don’t beat til smooth. Set the batter aside for 20 minutes if you can as this makes it rise better when cooking, but if you can’t wait, don’t worry.

Cook the pancakes in a hot pan. The added butter in the batter means you don’t need to grease the pan each time, but don’t be surprised if you have to sacrifice the first one to the pancake gods. Everyone has problems with this one! Keep them warm until needed.

While the pancakes are cooking, sweat the spring onions, halved cherry tomatoes and  the chopped red pepper and chilli in a little bit of oil with the thyme until softened. Add in the beaten egg and cook til just solid but not too stiff and take off the heat. This stops the scrambled egg becoming overcooked while you dish up the pancakes.

The pancakes are slightly sweet from the plantain and incredibly moist while the scrambled eggs are packed with flavour and the chilli will waken you nicely. I actually hate scrambled eggs and enjoyed these so much, I made them two mornings in a row. I felt ready to take on the world after this. It really is the breakfast of champions!

Miss South blogs at North South Food