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!
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.
