Kedgeree is great. It’s a breakfast dish but you can have it any time. It’s quick and easy and a very good recipe for one, but it is also good when you have an overnight guest who you want to impress with breakfast, and because my version mostly uses tinned ingredients, it’s an ideal camping dish.

This recipe serves one.

Ingredients

• 200 g can of smoked herrings (in brine, please; not tomato sauce)
• 60 ml basmati rice (or any long-grain rice, but I insist on basmati)
• half an onion, diced (I use already diced frozen onions)
• half a small can of mushrooms (I like the ones in butter sauce)
• One hard boiled egg, roughly chopped
• A big pinch of curry powder (I use Clive of India Hot curry powder – this is an outrageous colonial dish after all!)
• About half a teaspoon of turmeric, for color
• Salt and pepper
• Butter

Method

In a small-ish frying pan over a medium heat, fry the onion in butter until it is soft and slightly brown, then turn the heat up to high. Stir in the curry powder and the turmeric until it’s combined with the butter and coated the onions, then add the rice to the pan. You want to toast the rice for about a minute, and keep it moving so that the rice picks up the color and flavor of the curry powder.

Once everything is a lovely orange color and nicely fragrant, pour in 180 ml water and bring to the boil. Once it’s boiling, cover the pan (if you haven’t got a lid that fits, just use foil), turn the heat right down and let it barely simmer for about fifteen minutes, or until the water has been absorbed and the rice is cooked.

In the meantime, pour yourself a glass of wine (if you are making this for lunch or dinner) or champagne (if you are making this for breakfast) and take some photos of the cooking process for your Instagram.

Once the rice is cooked, fluff it up a bit with a wooden fork (I had trouble finding a wooden fork in Sydney when I first moved here, and was even told by a shop assistant in a cookware shop that they did not exist and I had conjured up the concept of a wooden fork in my head, but it turns out that someone at Ikea also conjured up the concept of a wooden fork in their head, so you can get one there). Use the wooden fork to break up the herring fillets (which you have drained, of course!) a bit, but not too much because you want chunks rather than flakes, and stir the into the rice, along with the chopped egg and the mushrooms. Do it gently otherwise you’ll break up the fish and egg too much and you’ll end up with mush. Just turn it over with the fork until everything is combined and heated through. Season with salt and pepper. I’m an absolute fiend for salt, but you probably won’t need that much because of the herrings.

If you’re doing this for Instagram, and are particularly interested in likes and comments, then this looks nice sprinkled with some cayenne pepper (I don’t do this because I don’t like the flavor) and some parsley arranged on the top (you could use coriander, of course, which might be a better flavor combination, but wouldn’t be in the spirit of colonial cuisine).

Then, of course, you eat it.

Notes

If you want a vegetarian version, leave out the fish and double the mushrooms, and you could maybe use some lentils or some smoked firm tofu or tempeh or something that will have a bit of a bite and a smoky or smoke-adjacent flavor. If you want a vegan version do that and leave out the egg (and use some kind of vegetable oil or other instead of the butter).

If you’re making this for more than one person (which you probably are if, as suggested, you’re making this for breakfast to impress last night’s shag your overnight guest), then increase the quantities of everything accordingly (use a 1:3 ratio of rice to water), and serve it on a platter, rather than individually, so people can help themselves.

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