Sweet potato & halloumi rostis with chilli-yoghurt eggs

Or a guide to getting grater's elbow

This is one of those impressive-but-actually-not-too-much-effort brunch dishes to have in your repetoire for when guests are staying. I think putting a bit of effort into cooking a proper Saturday morning meal sets a nice tone for the day and allows everyone to wake up when they want, get showered if they wish and relax into close proximity a la halls days with a more reliable stock of clean towels. Enter: rostis made up of grated sweet potato and halloumi cheese, served alongside my easy take on Turkish eggs. It’s satisfyingly filling without feeling too heavy or greasy, and thanks to the creamy yog and fiery chilli, quite invigorating.

Serves 4

For the rostis
2 large sweet potatoes
1 pack of halloumi
1 small red onion, diced
1 heaped tsp paprika
Generous squeeze of garlic paste
1/2 tsp onion granules
3 tbsp plain flour
1 egg, whisked
Salt & pepper
Plenty of veg oil for frying

For the Turkish eggs
50g butter
1 large red chilli, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, finely diced
250g Greek yoghurt (get out of the fridge 30 mins before cooking so it’s not super cold)
2 tbsp lemon juice
Salt & pepper
Glug of red wine vinegar
4 eggs, cracked into separate bowls or remakins, yolks intact
Sprinkle of sumac
Fresh, chopped coriander to finish if you like it

Use a box grater to grate the sweet potatoes, then tip into a tea towel and squeeze out as much water as you can. It might take a few rather strenuous squeezes but minimum moisture makes for a much better potato cake. Pop the sweet potato gratings in a bowl and grate all of the halloumi on top. Add the red onion, paprika, garlic paste, onion granules, flour, egg and seasoning and mix together.

Heat your oven to 200°C. Fill a large frying pan with a generous layer of oil - it will need to cover the bottom half of your rostis - and bring to a medium heat. Use your hands to make the rosti mixture into a ball, then flatten into a small pancake before placing in the oil. You should be able to cook three or four at a time and make seven or eight in total (so fry them in two batches). They’ll need 4-5 minutes on each side, before being transferred to kitchen roll for a few minutes and then arranged on a foiled baking sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes while you make the yoghurty eggs. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil (this is for the eggs) while you make the chilli butter topper by adding butter and chilli to a small frying pan and gently cooking. In a small bowl, mix the yoghurt, garlic and lemon together, then add salt and pepper to taste.

Add vinegar to the pan of boiling water, swirl the water with a spoon and then tip the eggs in one at a time. They’ll be poached in 3 minutes, so plate up your yoghurt ready to add them to. Finish the yoghurt and eggs with your chilli butter, plus sumac and coriander if you like.

Serve with the rostis and enjoy!