The big breakfast

A proper English breakfast

When we were hiking from inn to inn in the Lake District in the early '90s, one of our joys each morning was watching a goofy morning British TV show, "The Big Breakfast," where one of the gimmicks was that the crew would arrive at a home, clean the house and prepare a proper English breakfast for the inhabitants, then clean up. Of course, they came unannounced, so the people were often in their bathrobes, curlers in their hair, etc. Sometimes the crew even brought a brass band for entertainment.

But to me, the big English breakfast was entertainment in itself. The American breakfast - bacon or sausage, eggs, hashbrowns and toast - pales in comparison.

This morning, I attempted a variation on the English breakfast. I started with turkey sausage crumbles, heating them until hot in a skillet, then adding two farm-fresh eggs, a little salt and pepper, then scrambling them until just done. I kept those warm while I browned the ripe tomatoes, halved and cut side down. Meanwhile, I sliced a couple of pieces of coffee cake, and topped them with a fresh currant sauce (recipe below). It was a very hardy and pretty breakfast.

Fresh Red Currant Sauce
Makes about a half cup

I had never seen fresh currents, only dried, so when I came across them at the grocery store, I had to try them. By themselves, they are almost as tart as cranberries.

Ingredients
4 ounces fresh red currants
1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons sugar (approximately)

Instructions
Wash and pull stems off currants. Put them in an ovenproof French canning jar, the ones that look like wide glasses with orange plastic lids.  I added one tablespoon of water and one tablespoon of sugar and microwaved them until the mixture boiled to the top of the jar. I removed the jar from the 'wave, tasted, and added another tablespoon of sugar. I again brought the mixture to a boil, and tasted again. This time it was just right for my taste; you may want yours sweeter, but the tarter sauce tastes nice when paired with a rich, sweet dessert.

Fish for breakfast

Kippers for breakfast?

Cheap Trick sang about breakfast fish on "Breakfast in America":
Could we have kippers for breakfast
Mummy dear, mummy dear?

So what did the teenagers in our group order for breakfast while we were hiking through England a few years ago? Kippers. And how did they like them? Not.

Fish is a hard sell for breakfast in America, except maybe in Hawaii. (When you're surrounded by fish, it always tastes good.) But when we stayed in Helsinki, the breakfast buffet included several kinds of fish, and all very tasty. Certainly a lot more appetizing than the Russian fried eggs we had been eating for the past couple of weeks by then; the typical Russian way of fixing a fried egg is to put it in a tiny hot skillet with butter or grease, then serve it before the white even has time to congeal. So you had a crusty bottom that was hard to cut even with a knife, and a runny, jiggly top. No wonder keffir is a popular breakfast drink there; the Lactobacillus probably keeps them from getting sick from the raw egg.

But fish is good for you, and to cut it out of your diet for what mom called the most important meal of the day is just foolish. Some traditions aren't worth standing on.

So if you're up for a little adventure, try these salt cod fritters. Salt cod, unfortunately, is sold by the pound, and is quite dear unless you figure that you actually are getting two pounds of fish for your money, since the salt removes the water weight from the cod. The good news is that salt cod keeps indefinitely in your refrigerator, awaiting an overnight soak (and several changes of water if you want to remove all the salt).

Lori K's salt-cod fritters
Serves 2

Salt cod fritters

Ingredients
1/4 pound salt cod
1 small shallot or two scallions
1/4 cup flour
Dash cayenne pepper
1 egg
Oil
Sauce
1/2 large ripe avocado
Juice of 1/2 lemon or lime
1 tablespoon water
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions
Soak the cod overnight. When you awake, drain it, slice it into thin strips, put it back in the bowl and cover with hot water.
Mince the shallot or scallion (using the crisp green part is OK).
Heat about an inch of oil in a cast-iron pot (a deep one will reduce splattering) until hot but not smoking over medium heat. Sprinkle flour with the cayenne pepper in a small deep bowl. In another small bowl, beat the egg well. Drain the cod strips and wring out the water, then mince. Mix the flour and the egg, fold in the cod and shallot or scallion. Drop by tablespoons into the hot oil, making sure they don't touch. When brown on one side, flip them over, cook for a few minutes, then drain.
While they're cooking, make the sauce:
Mash the avocado, add the citrus juice, then enough water to make it smooth, and season.
Serve over the fritters. Eat them while they're hot!

Hashbrowns, ham and eggs

Ack! Life has interfered with Lori K's Cafe this week. To make up for it, here's the yummy hashbrowns I made this morning. They didn't look as neat as this picture, but I'm sure they tasted better.

Lori K's hashbrowns with eggs and ham

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 medium white potatoes

1 medium yellow onion

2 tablespoons oil

1 tablespoon butter

Garlic salt and pepper

2-4 free-range eggs

Sea salt

2 thin slices ham (I used ham-off-the-bone from the Harris Teeter deli)

Instructions

Grate the potatoes into a bowl of cold water. When completed, swish all the gratings around in the bowl and drain well. Chop the onion.

Heat a large cast-iron skillet to medium-high heat, then lower it to medium-low heat and add the oil. Swish it around so that all the surface and up the sides a half-inch are coated. Add the potatoes in a clump in the middle, then move them out to the sides. Sprinkle the onions on top. Cut the butter into small cubes and distribute evenly atop the potatoes and onions. Season with garlic salt and pepper.

Cook for 5-10 minutes until the edges of the potatoes are brown. Cut the round of potatoes into quarter sections by slicing across the pan with a metal spatula, then slicing again perpendicular to the first slice. Flip each quarter so the toasty side is now up. Make a little well in the center of each potato quarter and put an egg in each (or 2 of them, for 1 egg apiece). Season with pepper and a grind of sea salt. Cook for 10 minutes, or until the whites have set.

When almost ready to serve, heat the ham slices for 30 seconds in the microwave.

Put the ham on the plate, put the hashbrowns with the eggs atop them over the ham, and garnish with parsley. Add hot sauce if you'd like. Serve immediately with strong coffee.