breakfast

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

Someone just emailed me this, which I thought was amusing:

The perfect breakfast...

1. Wake up in a Georgian country house with a hangover of biblical proportions. Slide your arm from beneath the slender alabaster neck of the recumbent debutante and silently pick your way through the detritus of last night's party to the kitchen. 

2. As soft golden sunlight arcs low across the paddock and gilds the chromework of the Aga like melted butter, find a big pan.

3. Heat an unconscionable quantity of oil to a gentle simmer and slip in the freshly made local sausages. Sausages should not be pricked and never fried. The intention is that they should poach in the oil.

4. As the sausages poach make tea. If it is a proper farmhouse there will be a gigantic 'Brown Betty' teapot of the type used to fortify British battalions throughout the last Great Unpleasantness. Add a spoonful of leaf tea (need we mention the sordid subject of bags?) for each person and 'one for the pot'. At this point the kettle will start its song, beginning the process of gently awakening the recovering partygoers. Pour the water over the leaves. The tea serves
the same purpose to a hungover Englishman that chicken soup serves to a Jewish New Yorker with a headcold and hives. This is not cooking...it's an emergency clinical intervention. An Englishman's mother will offer him tea as first response medical aid even if his arm has been severed by a combine harvester.

5. Move the sausages to the warming oven, pour off all but a light glazing of the oil and begin to brown the bacon. Much has been written about good bacon and I do not propose to repeat it. Suffice it to say... smoked... streaky... thin... crisp. Place in the warming oven when done.

6. Open a can of Heinz baked beans -accept no substitute- these are not so much a foodstuff as an architectural element of the finished plate. Think of beans as colour and a concealer of disheartening flashes of empty plate between meats.

7. Mushrooms and tomatoes may be grilled at this stage but no gentleman would consider eating them. They are vegetables. Vegetables are a form of table decoration. They aren't food - they go next to food. As the great Dr Johnson should have said 'Vegetables are what food eats' and I have no intention of disagreeing.

8. Americans eat hash browns at breakfast. They are disagreeable to an Englishman. I understand that the French, who can make food out of almost anything, use them to sole espadrilles.

9. There are many different ways to cook eggs but most of them are purely of interest to invalids, children and the feeble-minded. The correct or 'proper English egg' is fried with lightly browned edges in the fat left over from the bacon. At the last minute, oil is flicked over the top of the yolk to seal it. This dangerous procedure causes
the yolk to form a perfect, golden, viscid capsule, the violation of which with a rough shard of toast, is the nearest that an Englishman will permit himself to unbridled sexual ecstasy.

10. While the eggs are being coaxed into tumescence the first of the walking wounded will have arrived in the kitchen. Ignore the bashful looks and tousled hair and administer tea in large quantities. Mugs enable fingers to thaw and many a tryst has been sealed by a coy glance over the chipped china rim. The more robust may be set to the simple task of toast.

11. Working quickly, lay down toast, top with an egg, flank with bacon and sausage and fill the spaces with beans. Serve forth.

Now, while that is all frightfully witty, I have to disagree on a few major points:

Their description of cooking the sausage is just bizarre. Poach them in oil? Is such a thing even possible?!

I also do not agree with the idea of frying bacon. It should be grilled, and shouldn't be crispy! And I wouldn't favour streaky at breakfast...

I don't have much time for tomatoes in a cooked breakfast - they are all too often watery heaps of nothingness, but mushrooms are a must!

And finally, while I must say I do like my baked beans, I fear that such a cavalier attitude as expressed here will end in tears as all the other components get almost literally swamped with baked-bean-sauce.

And finally finally... where is the black pudding!?

[mothman]

What, no fried bread? And bacon should be thick, back and unsmoked. Beans, I can take or leave (although a plate of beans on fried bread, washed down with ice-cold milk, is the sole worthwhile culinary memory I have from 9 years of boarding school). I prefer scrambled eggs, personally, mainly because my wife does them really nicely (and her fried eggs are done in so much oil they don't get crispy round the edges). Sausages should be grilled, or done in the oven. Fresh percolated coffee and freshly-squeezed OJ rather than tea, please.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

When I do myself a cooked breakfast I usually fry the bacon, not out of preference but because it's easier to do everything in the one frying pan. That way you reduce the amount of washing up and don't have to mess around with the grill at the same time as the frying pan. Grilled bacon is much nicer though.

On the subject of beans, the bloke is clearly insane to insist on Heinz beans. Heinz beans aren't better than other kinds, they're just more expensive. Obviously you should never have value beans as they are properly horrible, but supermarket own brand (non-value) beans are absolutely fine. In fact I have a suspicion that Sainsbury's own brand beans taste slightly better than Heinz.

[glitch]

Bacon should be back, just-before-crispy and smoked. Also, hash browns or potato cakes are fucking lovely and there's an absence of eggy bread.

[mothman]

(I also note with approval that the narrator of the main piece does not brush his teeth before breakfast)

[Viero_Berlotti]

Black pudding is fucking rank. I had some put on an English Breakfast by mistake once and it completely contaminated the whole plate giving everything a slight taste of blood.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

I don't think I've consciously eaten any baked beans other than Heinz for at least fifteen years. But I'm an open minded chap, I shall give someone else a chance to win me over next time...

Bacon should be back, just-before-crispy and smoked. Also, hash browns or potato cakes are fucking lovely and there's an absence of eggy bread.

I've never been a fan of hash-browns, but that may be because I have only ever had those horrible greasy frozen ones that are ubiquitous in greasy spoons.

And I'm not sure about eggy-fried-bread in a fry-up. I would normally have it as an altogether separate and less complicated breakfast, with ketchup. I feel that alongside bacon and sausages, you're better off with your egg and bread products being independent.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

and smoked

FUCK OFF!

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

FUCK OFF!

It's gotta be smoked I'm afraid.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

FUCK YOU FUCK OFF

[aaaaaaaaaargh!]

ETT's clearly correct, there's no point disputing it

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Fucking cancerous sputum oozing from old leather, that's smoked bacon.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

I haven't got a bad thing to say about unsmoked bacon, other than the fact that it hasn't reached its full, smoky, potential. Therefore I win this debate!

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Look at the shelves of supermarkets, largely unsmoked and only the polite stock of smoked in the corner for utter freaks who like ingesting soggy sick.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

Look at the shelves of supermarkets, largely unsmoked and only the polite stock of smoked in the corner for utter freaks who like ingesting soggy sick.

Are you suggesting that the general public has taste and decency?! I think we both know you're barking up the wrong tree there...

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

Shoulders you don't even drink tea so therefore your contribution to this breakfast discussion is null and void as far as I'm concerned.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Well your digestive system is an NHS funded machine on wheels you have to carry around everywhere with you. And your Dad's gay.

[rudi]

I like the fact you're mean about his dad, yet respectful enough to capitalise his title.

You don't drink tea? What are you, French?

If you're having a fried breakfast tea or juice is the only option. Coffee's great, but belongs with a more continental approach to petit dejuner, be it a croissant or just a couple of fags.

[buttgammon]

How can you not have tea with breakfast? The taste of tea having just eaten sausages is heaven.

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

Well your digestive system is an NHS funded machine on wheels you have to carry around everywhere with you. And your Dad's gay.

Yeah so, look at you spending all that energy digesting your own food. All I have to do it sit back, relax and let the Digestomatic 3000 take care of all my nutritional needs and YOU'RE paying for it with your tax dollars. Oh, and my dad is not gay, he's bi.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I don't have tea or coffee, at all. It's not something I've ever concealed. I like my refreshment cold and fruity.

I'm not imposing my breakfast routine on anyone either, I only popped in due to my disgust at the emboldened 'smoked' comment, imposition itself.

[Charles Charlie Charles]

^ ^ = S?S! not drinking tea with his breakfast.

[Hobes]

I have only one thing to add to this conversation:

Smoked bacon is best bacon

Okay, two things, black and white puddings. Yum!

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

I've never had white pudding. How does its taste compare to black?

[Suttonpubcrawl]

White pudding is amazing. I've never seen it anywhere in England though.

[mook]

I can't believe this thread has gone on so long without anyone mentioning the true champion of the proper English breakfast, The Kipper (or kipper fillet, if you're a child or a woman). A grilled kipper with a couple of poached eggs and a few slices of raw tomato is quite frankly the finest breakfast a person could ever need, and it's got the benefit of repeating like buggery so you get to enjoy it all day long. Failing that, poached natural smoked cod or haddock, with poached eggs and some wilted spinach is pretty fucking good too, so there, you can stick your greasy fucking fry ups right up your arse.

[Charles Charlie Charles]

A grilled kipper with a couple of poached eggs and a few slices of raw tomato is quite frankly the finest breakfast a person could ever need...poached natural smoked cod or haddock, with poached eggs and some wilted spinach...

And a butler to bring it to you along with your freshly ironed The Times m'lord?

[Hobes]

I found (Irish) white pudding to be pretty similar to black pudding in in terms of spice only milder, the main difference is in the texture because of the addition of cereal grains, and the fact that it is made from pork meat rather than blood.

If I had to pick one, I'd stick with black pudding, but the full Irish breakfast should have both.

[mothman]

Pah, kippers. next thing you know, someone will be extolling the merits of Eggs Benedict. I can't imagine anything worse - poached eggs smothered in savoury custard.

(My wife, however, is especially fond of them, harking back to a memory of having it for breakfast at a very nice hotel on Cannery Row in Monterey, watching seals fishing out at sea)

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

Beans, I can take or leave (although a plate of beans on fried bread, washed down with ice-cold milk, is the sole worthwhile culinary memory I have from 9 years of boarding school).

Ah, beans and milk: a classic combination.