The Sacred Art of Eating

A sandwich of duck breast, pomegranate and mint, on home-made (for the bruschetta) pain de campagne. No, I wasn’t sharing!

With K and K staying over after our Saturday night dinner do, I needed a suitably swish breakfast to keep up the illusion of domestic godessliness.

• Breakfast Bruschetta

I nearly made two recipes for this breakfast, but felt one would suffice. Either I was grossly wrong or it was very good, as I ended up making two batches! What makes these breakfast bruschetta isn’t very clear, but we ain’t quibbling. They were yummy for breakfast, with a big cup of coffee.

 Dougal had hand-crafted some pain de campagne specially (including overnight ferment to make the sour dough) and I had hand-selected some lovely ripe fuerte avocados in waitrose. The addition of some olive oil, and good tomatoes, and lime juice and parsley for the avocado ones, and we had a highly sophisticated brekkie. It’s not always like this at our place, I promise!

When staying over at my parents, I might as well say thank you with an awesome breakfast, right?

• Orange French Toast

Last weekend saw D and I head to Dunbar to give two school friends a good send off as they move to the New York for two years. HarveyNick came down with us too, to help out with the dancing-men being always in short supply at ceilidhs- and so it seemed right that I used the opportunity to make a proper breakfast for us all.

I had to start by drying out my mum’s fabulously fresh bread a bit first. Eggy bread really calls for stale loaf but gosh darn we only had fresh. So I sliced the bread up first and laid it out in the sunshine for a bit.

The bread is soused in the standard eggy mixture, but with the luxurious addition of some full cream milk, cinnamon and orange zest. Thereafter it is cooked as normal, but then served drenched in a potent orange syrup of freshly squeezed orange juice and one’s Mother’s finest marmalade.

In the absence of one’s Mother’s finest, we think Golden Shred would be the best bet (Nigella recommends Tiptree but we all think that’s dull!).

Serve with lashings of tea, preferably in a fabulous tea cosy that matches the dish.  Enjoy!

Creating an unusual breakfast treat for your still-slumbering house-guest before dashing off to work? It must be Nigella Express!

• Pear and Ginger Muffins

Our house guest was due to take a train back to Nottingham on Monday morning; we both had to be at work as usual that day. I didn’t think I could abandon him in the house with nothing to eat and this recipe spoke promisingly of being largely preparable the night before- wet ingredients jug in the fridge, dry ingredients on the side.

For the most part this was true, and you basically did just have to add pear, mix the whole lot together and spoon the contents into muffin cases. (Note to self: buy proper muffin cases to go with the nice big muffin tin re-acquired from home!) However you’d probably be surprised to find how time consuming peeling a couple of pears and filling paper cases actually is. I was consequently a little late for work.

Lateness aside, this were a simply divine breakfast treat; light and moist and warmly but not dominantly spicy. They were so good, in fact, that I made them again three days later for a colleague’s bring-a-dish leaving lunch at work.

We have an old uni friend staying this weekend, so you may notice we’ll be cooking quite a lot. Starting with our fabulous breakfast this morning.

• Home-made Instant Pancake Mix
• Blueberry Syrup for Pancakes

I should probably start by admitting that whilst we have made these pancakes several times before (they are pretty standard issue large thick pancakes) we haven’t ever gone down the suggested route of making up a jar of the dry mix to keep in the cupboard like Betty Crocker mix to be flung together when we occasionally fancy a party at 7am.  I  don’t think this matters but perhaps you will write a letter to the Man in Charge and he will say I have to take this recipe off the list because I haven’t done it properly.

But really. It’s not that hard to fling into the food processor flour, bicarb, baking powder, salt and sugar at the same time as eggs and milk. Particularly not when your boyfriend does it as you are in bed with the sinus headache from hell, working your way through the second box of tissues of the week. But I digress.

Whilst this was not the first time we’d made these pancakes, it was the first time we’d gone the whole hog and made the accompanying blueberry syrup too. It’s made of blueberries and maple syrup, an inspired but not unorthodox combination. I’m not an out and out maple syrup fan- often I find it a bit cloying- so I was pleased that this turned out as quite a sharp, very fruity sauce. It almost felt healthy!

With a whole chapter of breakfast recipes and a boyfriend who rarely eats breakfast, sometimes you have to bend the rules…

• Croque Monsieur Bake

In my defence I did make this masterly dish at breakfast time; it then sat in the fridge all day, rather than overnight, and we had it as a rather fine Wednesday supper. Apparently, according to the book, if you eat it for supper you are supposed to do so in your dressing gown. Whoops!

I was initially worried that it called for rather a lot of mustard but once spread across six slices of bread it seemed about the right amount. Eating it you did occasionally get the odd Dijon-y mouthful, but certainly wasn’t overwhelming.

This was pretty filling, probably because of the six eggs! Other wise it was just a ham and cheese piece, right? Per person it worked out at two slices of bread, two slices of cheese, a slice of ham, two eggs and a mouthful of milk. Having it sitting in the eggy milky mixture all day made for a lovely squidgy consistency with the ham a nice firm contrast. It made a fantastic noise when I took it out of the oven, spitting and crackling away. I tried to film it but as it was an impromptu decision the lighting was all wrong and the focus out, so I shan’t share it with you!

Probably a bit of a hefty dish for brunch, I’d have said. Maybe if you’d been out living the high life the night before.

Fancy early morning eating has a mixed reception…

• Go Get ‘Em Smoothie

This is a breakfast drink, designed to be wholesome enough to be a decent start to the day. Like Nigella, I regularly find myself with over-ripe bananas, so I had followed the good lady’s advice and chopped them up and bunged them in the freezer. They certainly meant that the drink was lovely and cold whilst also quite substantial.

We cheated slightly on ingredients. I have been unable to find Chocolate Ovaltine anywhere in its pure form; Chocolate Ovaltine Light, yes, but not the normal. I dare say in a milk-based drink it probably makes little difference, but I am morally objected to Light versions of things, so I have not purchased. I decided to make up for the absence with some cocoa and chocolate. The result was a little grainy. Better would have been some maltesers, I feel sure!

When we had these for breakfast on Christmas day were were lacking the Choccy Ovaltine, but we also didn’t have any Camp Coffee Essence. At the time I made a small pot of espresso and added some of that; this time I was able to add the correct volume of scary black syrup. We both found it a little over coffee flavoured, a bit bitter. But again that might have been the cocoa.

We were neither of us that impressed, but I still feel I have somewhere to go with this recipe. I would like to make it with the ovaltine, and I’d also like to try the child friendly version (substitute the Camp Coffee for some smooth peanut butter)(I don’t even like peanut butter!). So you may see this recipe again. There are still bananas in the freezer after all, and the ones in the fruit bowl are looking spotty….