Imperative cooking: breakfast
itor4L."LtiAL.- "Jeks___ARLA WHAT to do if you are fed up with English breakfasts? I suppose one reaction, not least from some Spectator readers, is that a patriotic chap has no right to be fed up with English breakfasts. Our dinners and lun- ches may not compare with those of the Frogs, Eyties and Dagoes, but when it comes to breakfast, our eggs, bacon, saus- ages, kidneys, porridge, haddock, kippers and bubble-and-squeak knock their rolls and coffee into a cocked tricouleur.
True, but not the point, and for two reasons. First, it is getting increasingly difficult to find proper bacon, kippers or sausages. But much more important, even the greater array of English breakfast dishes only amounts to a dozen or so and there are 365 days a year. Even sausages made at home with roughly minced pork and proper skins, even the best kedgeree or devilled kidneys tire. No sensible chap of taste would want to eat the same dinner each week let alone every day, yet many seem content to do just that at breakfast.
At least the Frogs are principled: they eat well and variously at dinner and lunch, at breakfast not at all. The English make a thing about breakfast especially in a certain sort of re- Edwardianised hotel — then at this sup- posed pinnacle of the day's eating serve exactly the same things each day.
Obviously a chap requires breakfast, and a lot of it. Equally obviously, a daily breakfast means some 50 to 100 different dishes a year. Yet for unknown reason whole categories of food — roasts, stews, most of the great fish dishes, all vegetables except potatoes, mushrooms and tomatoes — are ruled out at any time before lunchtime.
Imperative cooks stand for no such nonsense and will already appreciate that anything which is delicious at 12.30 or 9.00 p.m. tastes just as delicious at 7.30 a.m.; or even better, since then most of us are sober. But others have to be freed from their restraining prejudices more gently. So for once, this column tries to help the girlish majority. The principle is to take dishes they do, in their childlike way, associate with breakfast — porridge, kedgeree, omelettes, kidneys — and show other ways to cook them. So if their narrow minds accept that porridge made with oats is breakfast food, try them (it would have to be on someone's birthday to permit such an imaginative and self-indulgent flight) on congee, rice porridge. Look it up in any Chinese book. I can't be bothered to give you a recipe and they do differ. It can have more or less rice, stock or water. It can be cooked for one or two or more hours. If they are really adventurous, serve it with salted duck's eggs (eggs are allowed at breakfast aren't they?) or even bean cheese, Chinese pickles, preserved veget- ables, Chinese sausage, duck or chicken. To be more English, drop an egg in at the last minute. Coriander is good and so are spring onions. But all these can be omitted and, if you do so, congee can be made almost as bland and boring as English porridge. With any of the other ingre- dients, it is a dish of enormous variety, just the thing for a cold morning. And it is very comforting when life is bleak. By the way, you want to ask for sticky or 'glut' rice.
A similar extension of an existing En- glish prejudice can be made with a risotto. If the tunnel mind will accept kedgeree Indian rice and chopped smoked haddock — perhaps its bore can be widened to take Arborio and monkfish. Even less deman- ding might be to extend the omelette to Spanish omelettes (potatoes, olive oil, eggs) or Indian omelettes (eggs, chick-pea flour and spinach). Both are improvements on the English variety. Both also can be kept warm, unlike the French, while father and the twins fish around in the congee to find and discard their spring onions.
There is nothing wrong with a devilled kidney, but treat it, and its acceptability as a starting point. Next stop is kidneys in sherry. Again, any book will tell you, the kidneys can be the cheapest ox and are best just sauted in olive oil. Remove them, then to the pan add more oil, garlic and a little raw ham (the blighters eat kidneys and bacon don't they?), when they have fried, the Fino. Heat all together for the last two or three minutes.
Once you've got them this far, you're off. With any luck they will soon be mopping up the sherry sauce, then looking around hopefully for salad and cheese afterwards or — and this is the sign that you have really won and exploded the narrow nonsense about breakfast — de- manding a small glass of wine.
Digby Anderson
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