Vegan Savoury Pain Perdu

When my children were little I used to make them a concoction we called Eggy Bread. It differed very slightly from the dish generally understood by that name, not because it was vegan - it wasn't, we were only veggie in those days, but because the egged bread was sandwiched together with marmite.

I liked this a lot, and it was a great way of rendering slightly tough old bread more tender for little mouths and teeth to cope with but as they grew older they eschewed it, as it were, and we stopped having it. Then I took the step I'd been aiming for all my life and went vegan, so that was that.

Of course, like nearly everything else that is cooked, the naming can get you into a lot of trouble. Many people would call this French Toast and who am I to challenge them? But my mother, who wasn't a fan of eggs, made plain buttered toasted sandwiches and then opened them up and called it French toast, so I'm not comfortable with that as a title; it sounds wrong to my inner child. Brits understand Eggy Bread very well, but this doesn't have eggs in it so I'd rather I didn't call it that. The French have a similar recipe to eggy bread for their Pain Perdu and at least that doesn't reference the eggs in the title. Since I'm in France I could use that. But the modifications would make a Frenchman swallow his beret. I cannot tell a lie and this rather long and rambling paragraph is why the post is called Vegan Savoury Pain Perdu!



Make some marmite sandwiches with thinly sliced bread. If you hate marmite then substitute at will. Miso might do it for you, yeast pate, nothing at all. You could use jam but I'd suggest you leave the nutritional yeast out of the dipping mix if you want to do that. You don't need margarine or extra spread as the sandwiches will be fried.

Make a dipping mix of 25g chickpea (besan) flour, 10g nutritional yeast flakes (about a large dessert spoon) and 100ml non-dairy unsweetened milk. You need to mix the dry ingredients and then very slowly add the liquid, mashing down the lumps as you go or it becomes unpleasantly gribbly and will leave little bits of unmixed flour all over your breakfast. You want a smooth, fairly liquid batter.

Heat a frying pan with a splash of neutrally flavoured oil i.e. don't use the Extra Virgin Olive oil.

Soak your sandwiches in the dip, one at a time on both sides and then put them into the hot pan. Fry until golden on the first side then turn over and repeat for the second. They shouldn't stick but you might have to be gentle when easing them up.

Eat immediately. The sweet or plain versions could have extra syrup poured over but the savoury ones need nothing at all apart from a strong cup of coffee to accompany them.