Thing Number One - Pain Perdu

As a name for this arrangement (stale bread dunked in beaten eggs and then fried), I do think 'Pain Perdu' is better than 'French Toast'.  I like the idea of bread that's been lost, and found again; brought back from the brink.  Besides, it isn't toasted. 

I sort-of followed this recipe which included poached pears.  That said, I'm not faffing about poaching a whole pear just for myself - I don't really care what it looks like, and I'm going to have to cut it up sooner or later!  So, chunks of pear, and a shake of sugar, in a half-and-half bath of water and whatever questionable white wine I had kicking about for cooking...

...and the whole lot goes on the heat.  I also slung in a couple of sprigs of thyme that were lurking on top of the microwave, more in a spirit of curiosity than for anything else.

Bring it up to the boil, turn it down to a simmer, and then let it burble away until the pears are cooked.  (How long this takes will depend on whether the pears were soft-ish to start with, or so solid you could club zombies with them.)

Once the pears are cooked, take them out of the pan and boil the syrup for a bit, to thicken it slightly.

Meanwhile, beat an egg, a tablespoon of sugar, and 50ml or so of milk together in a dish.  I also grated a good bit of nutmeg in (since this is a very custardy mixture, and in my head the link between custard and nutmeg is pretty much unbreakable), and added a couple of spoonfuls of the pear-and-thyme syrup, for good measure. 

Soak slices of stale bread in the mixture for a few minutes on each side.

(I had a whole plan to use up the remains of a white sandwich loaf for this, until I started cooking and realised that a) it wasn't just slightly stale, but had dried out to the point where it had taken on the brittle sturdiness of a breeze-block; and b) although outwardly unblemished, it had somehow also managed to go mouldy all the way through - cue a hasty Plan B in the form of an ageing plastic sliced loaf of something worthy with sunflower seeds in it.  I wouldn't normally think of using something with bits in for pain perdu - I'm not sure the textures really work together - but needs must, and all that.

I did try cutting circles out of the bread with a pastry cutter, but I hastily stopped; it was revoltingly twee.  I'm very sorry and I won't do it again.)

There are times when something other than butter will do; times, even, when a substitute is actually better.  This is not one of those times.  Fry the soaked slices in butter for a couple of minutes...

...then flip over and give them a couple of minutes on the other side.

Then eat it. I added some cheapo ice-cream, because I thought it might all be a bit sweet (and obviously adding sugar-laden dairy produce helps no end with that problem...).

Things I learned

• Pears and thyme - oh yes. 
• Pain perdu with bits in - better than I expected, although I think perhaps this particular lost bread would have found itself better with something savoury.  Although bread with nuts in could actually work quite well for this...
• Bread can go mouldy inside when it isn't mouldy on the outside!  Who knew?