Jon Snow - Quick Mushroom Omelette

And you thought your work deadlines were pressing. Veteran news anchor Jon Snow has spent thirty years chasing stories - and, of course, the odd hurried snack between broadcasts. As a student, however, Snow's kitchen endeavours are summed up in one word: eggs.

"I am as bad a cook now as I was then," Snow says, "but my predilection for eggs remains. I'm a four-minute, soft-boiled egg man: then whack it on the top when fresh out of the pan and spread onto burnt toast soldiers."

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This was not the height of his culinary skills, either.

"I could also rise to a mushroom omelette or scrambled eggs. Eggs every which way, in fact. Heaven knows what it did for my digestive system, but I guess if you had opened me up in those days, you'd have found eggs."

"We certainly never ate out, though we used to get fish and chips from the Somalis on the corner and a good buffet lunch in the Union. The other staple was corn flakes, any time of day, with milk in various stages of decay."

Ingredients for an omlette for one

2 eggs, whisked
100g button mushrooms, roughly chopped.
Butter
Splash of milk
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Melt a knob of butter in a frying pan over a medium heat, and gently fry the mushrooms for five minutes until just cooked through. Remove from the pan.
2. Stir up the eggs in a bowl with a dash of milk.
3. Turn the heat down to low, and add the rest of the butter to the pan. When it's bubbling, pour in the egg mixture and cook slowly, using a heatproof spatula to pull the cooked edges in towards the middle of the pan.
4. After a few minutes, scatter the mushrooms on top. When cooked, the omelette should be barely brown on the bottom, soft and moist in the centre.

Top 5 cooking links:

www.recipes4us.com Get past the naff name and you'll find a wealth of recipes from around the globe, helpfully organised and fully searchable. There's also an intriguing new "Food in Film" section, so if your favourite flick is Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café, you can buy some green tomatoes and, well - you get the picture.

www.waitrose.com/food_drink/recipes Ok, so you can't afford to shop at Waitrose, but you can at least cheekily recreate their brilliant recipes using Asda's own brands. The facility to browse by category such as "Quick and Easy Snacks" is good if you're looking for inspiration, and the cocktail-creator promises weeks of inebriation.

www.hub-uk.com Hub is a foodie favourite, with lots of information and advice on all things edible, and how to cook them. Run by a semi-professional chef, Hub's recipe collection is particularly well stocked (although disappointingly, the section on "Desserts, Puddings and other naughty things" doesn't include anything more risqué than Crispy Rhubarb Pie).

www.timesonline.co.uk/foodanddrink Yes, I know recommending the Times' own cookery section smacks of nepotism, but don't let that put you off. The Times' Food and Drink section has a huge archive of articles, and often carries offers on eating out. And if you're tired of drinking corner-shop plonk, Jane MacQuitty's Best bottles under £5 is definitely worth a look.

www.ucook.com Ucook (or GSN's Recipe Box, as it's now called,) is a staggeringly large database of recipes. It can tell you 957 things to do with a carrot, for example, should boiling them get a little boring. It also has an "Ask the Chef" page where you can send the experts your kitchen questions - though "Who's been sick in the sink?" probably won't get answered.

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