When I was about 14 years old, I got a Saturday job working in a cafe at a golf driving range. I loved it, and ended up staying there until I was 18, I only left when I moved away to go to University. Each staff member did everything – cooking in the kitchen, organising club rentals, cleaning the toilets, serving behind the bar; there wasn’t one job for you, another for me, we all pitched in together, with plenty of banter and a few practical jokes along the way (I was once slapped across the face with a raw sausage, but that’s another story). The food we served was simple – sandwiches, toasties, chips, jacket potatoes, burgers etc, but it was all cooked fresh by us and it was a fantastic introduction to the world of work and cooking for me.
One of our regular customers would sometimes ask for a Baked Bean Toastie, and I hated making them. They weren’t on the menu, but as we knew him, we would make an exception. A Baked Bean Toastie was just a few spoonfuls of baked beans, sandwiched between two pieces of bread and toasted on the hot plate. It was simple, but the beans would make such a mess of the hot plate that it would wind me up. However, I did like the idea of it, and I started to make toasted wraps at home with baked beans and cheese inside. Because the wraps are folded around the filling, holding most of the beans and juice inside, it was much cleaner. I started introducing different fillings to my toasted wraps – eggs, mushrooms, hash browns etc to try to create the ultimate breakfast wrap, but I kept coming back to this: veggie sausage, baked beans, cheese, American mustard and either mushrooms or sliced gherkins, depending on what mood I’m in. It sounds like a strange combination, especially with the gherkins, I know, but trust me, it’s delicious!
This isn’t a regular breakfast for me, it’s more of a weekend treat, and I get so excited waiting for it cook that I have to stop myself from making another one before I’ve even finished making the first. It can be a messy thing to eat, you may well end up with tomato sauce dribbling down your chin, but I think that adds to the fun of it.
Tip: If your wrap leaks while it’s toasting, once you’ve taken it off the heat, wipe the griddle pan/George Foreman straight away whilst it’s still hot. It’s so much harder to clean once its cold and the cheese and tomato sauce has set.
Serves 1.
Ingredients:
- 1 vegetarian sausage
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 2 mushrooms, sliced (or a sliced gherkin)
- 1 tortilla wrap
- 1 tablespoon of American mustard
- A few slices of cheddar cheese
- 3 tablespoons of baked beans
Method:
- Cook the sausage according to the packet instructions.
- Meanwhile, put the oil and sliced mushrooms in a frying pan over a medium heat and cook, turning every so often until cooked through and just brown on both sides.
- Spread the mustard over the centre of one side of the wrap and top with the cheese and cooked mushrooms (or gherkins if using).
- Cut the cooked sausage in half, length ways, open it out and place it on top of the mushrooms.
- Spoon the baked beans over the sausage.
- Fold two opposite sides of the wrap in on themselves about an inch, so the wrap now looks like a rectangle with two rounded edges.
- Start rolling up the wrap now from one of the round edges, all the way to the other side.
- Place the wrap into a griddle pan (or old George Foreman machine like me) and cook for about 5 mins or until hot all the way through. When the cheese and beans start to escape, it’s a good sign that they’re hot.
- Serve immediately.
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