There's nothing for lunch!... Green masala & egg

Another emergency lunch where I'd failed to defrost a soup in advance and didn't have the makings of a nice big salad and the fridge was looking accusatorily empty and unpromising. In fact, the fridge's total Fresh Food quota was four baby sweetcorn and a tablespoon or two of leftover cream. There were, however, eggs. I also don't have much time for lunch. Mental process: egg on toast? But that'll make me sleepy all afternoon. There's frozen peas: pea omelette? But an omelette without cheese is no fun... Oh look! I have green masala paste! Toast takes 5 mins, hard-boiling eggs only takes 10...

For this magical, tasty, cheeky free-for-all of dish, you need green masala paste, so if you don't have that you should a) visit me with a small jar and a hopeful look in your eyes, or b) spend a happy time making up great quantities so you can pop all but one jar in the freezer and not be without it for yonks. You also need eggs. Then some kind of creamy base: cream, mayonnaise, or yoghurt will all do, on their own or in combination. And then any veg or salad stuff you can rustle up.

So far I've found: 2 eggs, the green masala paste, four baby sweetcorn chopped small, and half a cup of frozen peas. Boil the eggs for 10 mins, then scoop them out and dump them into cold water while you use the same water for the peas & sweetcorn. (Frozen peas take 2-3 mins, as soon as they're bubbling about happily they're done.)

Peas and sweetcorn cooked & drained; stir in a half teaspoon of green masala paste.

Hunt through the fridge some more: find cream! Hurrah! Not much, but I don't need much. 2 tablespoons is plenty.

Mix it all up, peel and quarter the eggs...

And then, because I'm feeling fancy, put the veg curry stuff in the middle with the eggs cunningly arranged around it, and sprinkle over some garam masala. A tea-strainer is handy for lightly sprinkling stuff rather than accidentally chucking great handfuls of stuff on.

Ta-da! Tasty healthy lunch in about 13 minutes total and I won't start drooping and falling asleep midway through the afternoon.

And here's another variation:

A very small handful of mixed leaves (the remnants of a salad bag), plus 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons of yoghurt, a big teaspoon of mayo, and 1/2 a teaspoon of green masala paste. (The yoghurt-mayo mix was rather a lot, you could safely halve those quantities.) And to make it photogenic, I kept three slices of egg aside to put on top, grated pepper over, and then drizzled a balsamic reduction over it. I wasn't sure my drizzling technique was quite right - should it be swirled or cross-hatched? - but Will says it's fine, except that if you do get some on the plate, you should drizzle more on the plate, to make it look intentional. He's responsible for our having balsamic reduction about the place, which he made at Christmas, by simmering balsamic vinegar until it was thick as molasses. (If it gets too thick, you can dilute it with... balsamic vinegar.)

But you don't really need to drizzle balsamic reduction over stuff unless you're showing off.