Black Pudding with Fried Apples

October mornings have a particular quiet to them. The kitchen is cold when you come down, and the light through the window is thin and pale, not yet committed to the day. This is when you want something with substance. Something that smells of butter and iron and fills the house before anyone else is properly awake.

Black pudding is one of those ingredients people either grew up with or didn't. If you did, no explanation needed. If you didn't, I'd say only this: it is rich, deeply savoury, with a mineral earthiness that sits somewhere between liver and good bread. Fry it in butter until the edges go crisp and the centre softens, and it becomes one of the most satisfying things you can put on a breakfast plate. People who say they don't like it have usually only met a bad one.

The apples are the point of balance. A sharp eating apple, something with real bite, cut into thick wedges and cooked in the same buttery pan until they turn golden and start to yield. The sweetness and the acid cut straight through the richness of the pudding. One needs the other. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: black pudding, apples, butter, Saturday. It hasn't needed changing since.

Get your pudding from a butcher if you can. The difference between a good one and a forgettable one is the whole distance between something you want to eat and something you merely tolerate. This is breakfast for two, made in one pan, in the time it takes the kettle to boil twice. We're only making breakfast.