I love Kedgeree for a weekend breakfast but it can be a bit of a pain to knock up in the morning, especially if you’ve indulged in a few shandies the night before.  So here is my quick and painless version. For the purists a recipe for Kedgeree from scratch can be found here. Kedgeree can take about half an hour to prepare from scratch this version takes less than 10 minutes.

Kedgeree is a dish consisting of cooked, flaked fish (sometimes smoked haddock), boiled rice, parsley, hard-boiled eggs, curry powder, butter or cream and occasionally sultanas.

Kedgeree is thought to have originated with an Indian rice-and-bean or rice-and-lentil dish Khichri, traced back to 1340 or earlier. It is widely believed that the dish was brought to the United Kingdom by returning British colonials who had enjoyed it in India and introduced it to the UK as a breakfast dish in Victorian times, part of the then fashionable Anglo-Indian cuisine. It is one of many breakfast dishes that, in the days before refrigeration, converted yesterday’s leftovers into hearty and appealing breakfast dishes.

An alternative view is that the dish originated from Scotland and was taken to India by Scottish troops during the British Raj, where it was adapted and adopted as part of Indian cuisine. The National Trust for Scotland’s book The Scottish Kitchen by Christopher Trotter traces the origins for the kedgeree recipe to books by the Malcolms dating back to the year 1790. According to this theory the dish travelled to India then returned to the wider UK.

The first view, that it was and remains an Indian dish, is evidenced by the popularity of the dish throughout the subcontinent today – although I still like to think if it as a Scottish dish!

You’ll need some vacuum packed pre-marinaded and cooked fish – I opted for the ASDA Extra Special chilli & garlic mackerel, some microwavable boiled rice – in the store cupboard I had the Veetee (dine in) Pilau Rice, and some curry paste – I had the Patak’s Madras.

Ingredients

Serves 2

• 200g Precooked fish
• 280g microwavable rice
• 15ml of curry paste
• 1 banana shallot
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 sachet of very lazy ginger
• 50ml of veg or chicken stock
• 1 lemon
• handful of chopped flat leaf parsley

Method

1. Finely chop the shallot and sweat off in a little butter and oil for 2 minutes until it starts to soften, then add the garlic and ginger and saute for a further 30 secs
2. Add curry paste and continue to saute for 2 minutes to cook out paste
3. Flake the fish and add to the curried shallot and mix through
4. Follow microwave instructions for the rice – usually 2 mins – ping and add to the curried fish mix
5. Turn up heat and add the stock to loosen the mix a little (the rice will soak all this up)
6. Finish with the juice of half a lemon, and finely chopped flat leaf parsley (boiled eggs optional)
7. Serve with a 1/4 wedge of lemon and lime pickle, and buttered toast.