Cooking With Author SD Shaw

 

 

Today we welcome SD Shaw, a U.K. author, on the Patchwork Quilt to share a recipe and his novel.

Welcome, SD (a.k.a, Steve)!  Tell us about your recipe and book. Both look interesting. I love cheese and pasta . . .and tomatoes . . .and you can't go wrong with bacon.

Breakfast Mac 'n' Cheese

Ingredients:

500g of dried macaroni (or preferred pasta)

300g of grated cheese (cheese of choice but works well with mature cheddar)

4 sausages (any variety)

6 rashes of unsmoked bacon

4 large eggs

4 large tomatoes 

1 small tub of soft cheese (such as Philadelphia) 

a little splash of olive oil

a pinch of salt and pepper

1 tablespoon of English Mustard

1) Start your pasta boiling in a saucepan, covering with boiling water with a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil added into the mix. The pasta should boil for around 10-15 minutes or until al-dente. Once cooked, drain and leave to cool.

2) Whilst the pasta is cooking, pop your sausages under the grill and cook till browned, turning to achieve maximum coverage. Repeat the process with the bacon rashers. Once the sausage has cooled, cut into slices and chop up the now crispy bacon. The meats are best cooked under the grill, in order to remove some of the fats, which will make the Mac more greasy than cheesy.

3) Chop the onion into dice or slices and fry up in a little olive oil.

4) Select a baking tray or large flat pan, use a drop of olive oil to grease it and tip in your pasta.

5) Add the cream cheese to the pasta in easily mixable spoonful's, add the salt and pepper and the mustard and coat the pasta as best you can. There is no cheese sauce, as this is intended to be quite a thick, dry, but sticky Mac and Cheese.

6) Mix in the bacon, sausage slices and 200grams of the grated cheese, ensuring an even spread.

7) Next, crate 4 circular 'craters' in the mixtures, making gaps in the pasta mixture, to which you will crack your eggs into, one per crater.

8) Slice the tomatoes into quarters and  wedge them into the pasta mix at frequent intervals, but not into the raw eggs, and sprinkle the remainder of the grated cheese over the top of the dish.

9) Bake for 20-25 minutes, at around gas mark 7, or until the egg whites are fully cooked and there is a nice golden, cheesy top to the dish.

10) Serve in slices, this dish is accompanied perfectly by a crisp green salad or a side of baked beans.

Okay, that recipe sounds wonderful. I must try it. Now tell us about your novel, The Peculiar Investigations of Felix Mathis #1: Astounding Secrets and Deadly Professors.

  

Felix Mathis is a regular 14-year-old boy with the usual problems. As well as struggling with school bullies, strange crushes and troublesome parental issues he also happens to have brilliant powers of deduction and a burning desire to become the world’s greatest detective. But when his sleep is disturbed by a series of loud crashes seemingly coming from beneath his house and his best friend, Morgan tells him of a fiendish plot to injure their fellow student Ellie Baldwin, Felix cannot even begin to imagine the dramatic and dangerous path his investigations are set to lead him on. As Felix struggles with his own investigations, Dominic Chase (a grizzled American spy) and Scarlett Romonova (a Victorian explorer who’s been frozen in time) two operatives working for the secret government agency SPIT, face a parallel struggle to control their latest house guest, a live Velociraptor, in a secret base deep beneath Felix’s house. 

As the worlds of both Felix and the Agents inevitably collide, they are forced to join forces in order to take down a mad Professor and stop his complex and evil plan, re-designing the genetic make-up of a number of kidnapped children and turning them into modern day versions of history’s most notorious bad guys . Along the way Felix is inducted into the Agency, must navigate a trap filled secret wing in the hospital, avoid reincarnated prehistoric beasts, fight zombified paramedics and come face to face with the evil genius, Prof. Callum Doyle.

Get your copy of The Peculiar Investigations of Felix Mathis here.

Thanks for joining us for Cooking With Authors today!