Stepping Aside In The Galley

If you’re a foodie like me then you’ll understand when I say that I feel like I know Nice now. I had a great restaurant experience last night and now I feel like I have thoroughly explored this city.  I feel I know every nook and cranny; I’ve had a ‘connection’. Me and Nice, we’re like ‘that’.                     

A friend who lives here took us to this great little Italian restaurant just near to where he lives. Gepetto, a relaxed, casual and full little restaurant. The chef Alex, likes to meet and greet and check in with his diners and I can’t imagine he get’s anything other than full-mouthed, nodding grins.  And, as well as the fact that the food was great, the prices were great too. Delicious.

                                  

I couldn’t help but order the same as George. It was a dish of scallops and home-made asparagus and herb-filled tortellini. And it was good. Nothing too fancy or complicated, just delicious, the Italian way.

My Grand Marnier crème brulee, was to die for. George argued that actually his nougat with orange caramel was to die for. We try not to air our ‘domestics’ in public so we quietly agreed to compromise. And agree that I was right. He is so lovely.                                                                                 

So now I feel happy to leave Nice. I came, I conquered and I went to Gepetto. Next stop, Ajaccio.

So before I head off across the Mediterranean sea in search of new pastures, I would like to share with you, ‘Billy Butlers Breakfast Muffin’. He’s very proud of it and I am not surprised. He has been perfecting this one for a while and generously agreed to share it with you. (after I generously agreed to let him loose in my galley…)

Please, put your hands together and give a big warm welcome to Mariquita’s main-sheet-man and deck-hand extraordinaire, Mr Billy Butler!

                                  

You will need;

                                                                                                        

2 eggs, beaten in a wide shallow bowl

1 wholemeal muffin      

2 slices of bacon

Cheese of your choice, today Billy opted for Roquefort, interesting.

1 dollop of Ketchup

1 mug of Coffee

Method;

• Begin by heating up a non-stick pan with a little sunflower oil. Whilst the pan is heating lightly toast your muffin. Apparently this stops any unwanted ‘sogginess’.  See, perfection.

• Once the pan is heated add the bacon. Put the lightly toasted muffin into the beaten egg to absorb the egg for a few moments. Then add the ‘eggy’ muffin to the pan with the bacon.                            

• After a few minutes pour the remaining beaten egg into a spare corner of the pan to fry. This will be added to your sandwich as extra 'egginess'.                                                                        

• When the egg has cooked on one side flip with a rubber spatula to finish. Turn the bacon too                                                      .                

• Whilst the egg ‘wedge’ is cooking with the bacon, turn the muffins over. You can now add the cheese onto one of the muffin halves. Let the cheese melt a bit and you can now start to assemble your breakfast muffin. Excited? Me too.

• Place the cheese topped muffin half onto a plate. Gently pile the bacon over the cheese then gather the wedge of cooked egg and with care, sit this on the bacon. Top with the final eggy muffin half and Billy recommends gently squeezing down on it with the spatula to ‘seal’ the deal.

• Drizzle a chosen spot on your serving dish lightly with a dollop of ketchup. Serve with a mug of coffee with frothy milk.
  
  Now, having watched and photographed this recipe being cooked I can tell you that it was performed with love, skill and many little perfections. Billy has definitely made this before and you can tell he has skills he picked up whilst working at MacDonald’s in his younger days (he’s a wise and worldly 23 year old now).

Bless him.

Now if Billy can do it, I’m sure you can (!) Feel free to send in your ‘perfected’ recipes. Tweaks and all. Of course you can keep any secrets, I understand. You don’t have to give it all away. But if you like, I’ll try your recipes out on my crew and let you know what they thought. And I will give you full credit right here on my blog or Facebook page, 33 Degrees.

Now before I sign off, I will just tell you to click on the Facebook link to the right of this blog. There is a small video of Mariquita adventure snipets from last year you might like to watch at the top of the Facebook page. I was the one holding the camera for 'the wave'. Jim was pretty calm and I just about managed to hold on and film it (sort of).

Sorry Ma. I'm fine!

I'm sure our trip to Corsica will be much calmer. I hope. I'll let you know all about it when we arrive. See you then and there. And thanks alot for reading.

Bon Voyage!