My working life has involved a lot of travel, staying in hotels and as a result, eating a lot of hotel breakfasts. These have evolved since I started and not for the best. The first time I had a full English Breafast was in a guest house. A little old lady brought out a perfect plate of food. What did I have (BTW there was no choice)?
2 Pork Sausages
2 Slices of bacon
2 Fried eggs
2 Slices of Black pudding
Some tinned tomatoes
Some baked beans
2 Slices of fried bread, made with proper beef dripping
and a rack of buttered white toast.
I had been drinking the night before and the sight of this was a wonder to behold. I was given the choice of HP Sauce or Heinz tomato sauce. A mug of builders strength tea accompanied it. It was freshly cooked, hadn't spent half an hour drying out in a metal tin, as most modern buffet breakfasts do. In short, it was perfect. It didn't have, hash browns, muffins, tomatoes with stalks, chips, scrambled eggs, beans in pots. As a result, to me, all of these are interlopers on the plate.
Sadly, over the years, the dripping fried bread has almost disappeared, the recipe for Heinz beans has changed and they taste disgusting (the M&S cheap beans are the best altenative I've found) and tinned tomatoes have made way for fresh ones. I don't mind the fresh tomatoes, but used to enjoy mopping up the tomato juice with the toast, so it is a downgrade. Both my wife and my doctor constantly nag me to disavow such delights, but I still make myself a full English as a special treat. I usually get an earful and told I'll die, but some things are worth it. If you want to have a cafe cooked full English in the London Borough of Barnet, the best place I know of is Cafe Anglais in Colindale. The food is freshly cooked and hasn't spent time drying out and going cold on a hotplate. Such hotel buffets are always a bit of a let down.
For me, preparation of a good full English is a bit of a ritual. I always source the meat from a good butcher. In Mill Hill, we are lucky enough to have Boucherie Gerard. They do great meat. For a full English, it has to be Gerard's Cumberland sausages, his smked back bacon and his large free range eggs. On Sunday, I stupidly forgot the Black pudding and had to make do with a fresh fried tomato, as we'd used the last tin of tomatoes in a soup. As Mrs T won't buy cheap white bread, which is essential, I had to make do with poncy Gail's sourdough, which it would be sacrelige to use for fried bread. I am a believer that you should use large sliced mushrooms. I don't really like it when you get whole big mushrooms that are grilled and a bit slimy. They are best with a bit of pepper. At home, I always flip eggs, so they don't have a big yellow yolk on view. I am paranoid about salmonella after my Dad nearly died of it in 1977. Oddly, it doesn't bother me in cafe's. My son had eaten all of the beans, so they were missing. When I do beans, I do like a bit of Lea and Perrins sauce on them.
I have two main problems with eating a full English at home. The first is that our dogs groak me, as they know there are sausages on the plate. The second is that my wife's misplaced belief that being healthy makes you happier, means that every aspect of the meal is criticised. Sausages and bacon are processed, mushrooms and tomatoes should be grilled, boiled eggs are more healthy than fried eggs. Lard is too unhealthy to fry things in. White bread is processed. The beans I like are too high in salt. The list goes on. I doubt that eating the breakfast pictured (from Sunday) will harm me as I eat it only once or twice a month. What I do know, without a shadow of a doubt, is that if I did't have such treats occasionally, life would not be worth living.
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus said "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". Given the current situation in the world, I suspect he's not wrong!
No comments:
Post a Comment