I haven’t tried a new breakfast recipe for a while, and since I didn’t have the ingredients for my usual breakfast smoothie in Sussex, I figured it was the perfect opportunity.

Jamie Oliver is God in our house – my Mum is also from Essex and she’s determined that I will work for him one day. So I knew that she would appreciate any recipe that had his name on it. He made these breakfast popovers on his Everyday Superfood programme a few weeks ago, and they’ve been on my mind ever since!

Shopping list: 1 tablespoon flour, 1 egg, 2 tablespoons cottage cheese, 1-2 slices of ham or bacon, 1 plum tomato, 2 chestnut mushrooms, 15g Parmesan cheese.

Admittedly, I did adjust the recipe to cater for what was already in Mum’s fridge. Jamie’s recipe recommends one slice of smoked ham. However, I used smoked bacon because we don’t often eat ham, and I used two rashers because I’m greedy!

I used a few cherry tomatoes left over from the lasagne, rather than one plum tomato. And I also used Grana Padana rather than Parmesan because it’s much cheaper!

Gimme the popovers:

1) Place the flour in a bowl and beat well with the egg and cottage cheese. I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten cottage cheese before, and it turns out I HATE the smell!

2) If, like me, you’ve gone for bacon then finely chop up the bacon and fry for a few minutes. The smell of bacon made up for the smell of the cottage cheese… Also chop the tomatoes and mushrooms (and ham if you’ve gone for the healthier option). Add these to the mixture and stir through with some salt and pepper.

3) Spoon the mixture into a frying pan on a medium-low heat to give you 6 popovers. The same bacon pan is fine! (Being lazy, again)

4) Leave them for a few minutes until they’re nicely golden and ready to flip over. Once flipped, gently squash them to about 1cm thick with your spatula – this is weirdly satisfying!

5) Once the popovers are golden on both sides, remove from the pan. Grate the Parmesan/Grana Padana onto the same pan, and then place the popovers back on top. Once the cheese has gone crispy, remove the popovers with the layer of cheesiness attached.

I was sceptical that this last step was a waste of time/a waste of money on expensive cheese, however it honestly makes so much difference! The popovers look and taste so much better from just 15g of cheese, honest.

Jamie serves his popovers with hot chilli sauce, natural yoghurt, rocket and some lemon. However, I’m not great with spice so I served my popovers with some Wilkin & Son’s Tiptree tomato ketchup (sticking to the Essex theme at least!) and some rocket.

I am used to having quite sweet things for breakfast so next time I would probably make this for lunch. But it was a nice change!