Recipe of the day

Cooking: 10 minutes. Serves 1-2

Introduction:

"We may pay lip service to seared tuna on a bed of rocket but, given the choice, most of us would go for scrambled egg on a bed of toast any day of the week." I'm with Nick Parker, author of Toast (Prion, £8.99), on this one.

I've taken to quoting from his deliciously irreverent book which is the antidote to trendy cookbooks and is top of my Christmas-present list.

It rejoices in the mundane pleasure of toast with "recipes", like beans-on-toast and marmite-on-toast, but it is the minutiae of toast-making which get under the crust of this toast lover.

Nick claims that cookery writers ignore toast, shamefully shunning its virtues. He is, of course, quite wrong; food writers and chefs, like everybody else, love toast. Some food writers, and I'm one of them, could live on it and take every opportunity of passing on tips for incorporating toast into supper dishes.

Take today's recipe. A few plump lamb's kidneys, thickly sliced and quickly cooked so they remain tender and sweet, have similar appeal to mushrooms-on-toast.

A squeeze of lemon juice and a smear of mustard add a hint tension to the textures and flavours, and a generous garnish of chopped parsley livens up the look of the dish while providing essential "greens".

Quantities given are perfect for a snack supper for two or blow-out for one. The choice of bread for your toast is a matter of taste. I'd recommend thickcut, white sliced which is lavishly buttered right up to the edges. But that was before I read Nick's musings, "What does your toast say about you?"

Do buy the book; it'll make you laugh.

Ingredients

To cook

Check over the kidneys, removing, if necessary, the thin, cloudy skin that covers them. Use a small, sharp knife to cut out the core then slice each kidney into four or five thick pieces.

Heat the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat then add the kidneys, tossing them around to cook both sides evenly, for a couple of minutes.

Add a very generous squeeze of lemon juice and give a final toss, then turn off the heat and leave the kidneys in the pan to finish cooking while you toast the bread.

Stir the parsley into the kidneys and butter the toast. Smear the toast with mustard and top with the kidneys and their juices. Eat immediately while piping hot and before the toast turns soggy.