Breakfast! The most important meal of the day (2004-2011)

[Jenni]

^^

Sure, I love talking about Indian food! It is a South Indian breakfast, popular in all of the Southern states.

Idli are steamed little cakes/dumplings. The batter is made from rice and urad dal that has been soaked and then ground to a fluffy batter. It is left in a warm place overnight to ferment until it has a fermented aroma and is full of little bubbles. This makes the idlis light and gives them their distinctive taste. Then spoonfuls of the batter are put in to idli moulds like theseand steamed until cooked. Good idlis are light, fluff and perfect for dunking in sambar.

Sambar is a spicy gravy dish (in India, gravy means a saucy dish, not actual gravy!) based on toor dal. The dal is cooked until tender and then vegetables and tamarind paste (freshly made please - no nasty jars of tamcon!) are added and cooked until tender. Then sambar podi (masala) is added and it is cooked a bit more. Sambar podi is a spice powder based on coriander, dal, chillies and some other spices. A final tadka including mustard seeds and curry leaves is added when it is all cooked.

A must have with idli-sambar is coconut chutney. Freshly grated coconut is ground to a paste with chillies, a little ginger and some fresh coriander. A little salt is added, and then a tadka of urad dal, mustard, cumin, dried red chillies and curry leaves goes in. This is just one version - there are many many coconut chutney recipes and they are all worth trying!

Hope this helps a little!

[Jenni]

This morning's breakfast was masala dosa with sambar and chutney. Sorry the pic isn't good - Got to the last dosa before I remembered I was going to take a photo, and then I rushed a bit and tore it a little putting it on the plate....it tasted great though!

[robirdstx]

I've enjoyed this the last few mornings.

Plain yogurt and a sliced banana, topped with ground flax seeds and a spoonful of strawberry preserves. Before eating, I stir it all up!

[Blether]

Hot weather and lovely spring vegetables turned my thoughts to Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce with Olive Oil & Chopped Vegetables, which with a chopped mirepoix added raw to the tomatoes at the start of cooking, without pre-frying, gives a fresh-flavoured, crunchy result that's a world away from the old tomato-and-onion standard, much more than the sum of its parts.

I made up a batch last night:

- and having gone out for capellini, came home with a pack of spaghettelli (!), which I boiled up this morning and shocked-and-chilled-briefly in a bowl of ice water. Topped with some of the sauce straight from the fridge, and served with a two-egg parmesan omelette:

[SobaAddict70]

First breakfast: Whey shake with natural peanut butter and a tablespoon of olive oil, glass of water with creatine

Second breakfast: Fried egg sandwich w/sausage and American cheese on a kaiser roll, orange juice

Yes, I'm boring.

[percyn]

Lately I have been making Indian style omelets - diced onion, garlic, ginger, cilantro and chopped green chilies.

Omelet on Steak Roll w/Chili Garlic Oriental Sauce

[rarerollingobject]

Omelet on Steak Roll w/Chili Garlic Oriental Sauce

percyn, Maggi Chilli Garlic sauce is my Waterloo! It looks a darker red than the MCGS I get here. Your bottle says it was made in India, do you think it's been modified for local palates at all? If so, I'm going to try and track some down and compare.

Breakfast for me was a pan fried mackerel fillet on crisp bread, topped with a very strong freshly-grated horseradish and Greek yoghurt sauce.

[heidih]

Breakfast for me was a pan fried mackerel fillet on crisp bread, topped with a very strong freshly-grated horseradish and Greek yoghurt sauce.

Oh my! Is the crispbread a thick whole grain cracker? I have been vowing to start using fatty fish more. I have no excuse as the Japanese market around the corner has lovely cleaned fish in individual or two person portions. Was it just into the hot heavy bottomed skillet to achieve the perfect skin or another method? The horseradish sauce of course is a brilliant counterpoint.

[rarerollingobject]

Oh my! Is the crispbread a thick whole grain cracker? I have been vowing to start using fatty fish more. I have no excuse as the Japanese market around the corner has lovely cleaned fish in individual or two person portions. Was it just into the hot heavy bottomed skillet to achieve the perfect skin or another method? The horseradish sauce of course is a brilliant counterpoint.

Yes, a thick wholegrain cracker. The brand name in Aus is Ryvita, but no doubt there are similar things that could be subbed. Any kind of nubbly grainy bread works for me.

Normally I'd grill (broil in US parlance) mackerel, but this was just seasoned on the skin side, popped into a hot oiled pan skin side down, put a plate on top of it to keep it flat and let it go for 5 mins on medium heat. Flipped for 30 seconds and that's it.

Speaking of Japan and mackerel..my two other favourite mackerel preps are:

1. Marinated overnight in sweet white miso thinned with soy sauce, mirin and grated ginger. Wipe marinade off and grill (broil) till skin blisters.

2. Marinated briefly in equal parts soy sauce, mirin, sake and a little sugar. Pat dry and grill.

It's mackerel again for dinner tonight, so you might see one of these make an appearance on the Dinner thread! If I don't go the other route I was thinking, which is pan fried in a reduction of Pimm's and fig vinegar..hmmm.

[percyn]

percyn, Maggi Chilli Garlic sauce is my Waterloo! It looks a darker red than the MCGS I get here. Your bottle says it was made in India, do you think it's been modified for local palates at all? If so, I'm going to try and track some down and compare.

...

Lol. The picture makes it look darker, but it is bright red with a touch of blood red ;-)

I have only tried Maggie sauce from India. The Indian stores should have quite a variety, including Chili masala, etc.

Great way to spice up a dish.

[Jenni]

Pesarattu (kind of a moong dosa) with carrot chutney. The usual side is ginger chutney, but I like to try and squeeze in veggies where I can. With coriander seeds, sesame, chilli and tamarind in the base and a tadka of mustard and urad, this particular chutney was absolutely delicious! I will be making it again.

[rarerollingobject]

Jenni, how do you make the ginger chutney? I love anything with ginger in it.

Breakfast for me was: zoong! For those unfamiliar, these are glutinous rice packages, stuffed usually with pork, sausage, salted egg yolks and peanuts or mung beans, steamed in lotus leaves. Dejah makes amazing-looking ones.

Apologies for the steamy photo!

[percyn]

Very nice breakfasts Jenny and RRO.

My breakfast yesterday consisted of left over Bah Mi to which I added a w/Fried Egg

Today, I made Scrambled Eggs w/ Prosciutto on a mini bagel.

[Jenni]

Rarem rolling object, your request for a recipe was enough of an excuse for me to make pesarattu-upma with allam pachadi for brekkie this morning!

Here's my recipe for the pachadi.

Ingredients:

A lime size ball of dried tamarind

1/2 cup grated fresh ginger

3-4 dried red chillies

2 tablespoons crumbled jaggery

Salt

Oil, preferably sesame (not the toasted kind)

1 tsp urad dal

1/2 tsp black mustard seeds

1 dried red chilli

A large pinch of hing

A few curry leaves

Soak the tamarind in hot water and extract a thick paste.

Put a teaspoon or two of oil in a pan and fry the dried chillies until they darken a little. Add the ginger and fry for 30 seconds or so. Take off the heat. Add the tamarind, jaggery and salt to taste. Grind to a paste (add little or no water so it is thick)

Heat a little oil in a small pan. When hot, add the urad dal. A few seconds later add the mustard and red chilli. When the mustard pops and the dal reddens, add the hing and the curry leaves. Stir once or twice then tip into the pachadi.

Serve with breakfast items like idli, dosa and of course pesarattu!

Here's a pic of this morning's pesarattu-upma. As I mentioned it is a dosa made from mung beans and a very little rice plus seasonings like chillies, ginger, coriander and onion. Traditionally, it is paired with upma for a filling breakfast. Upma is a sort of...well I guess I'll say a kind of pilaf/mashed mixture made with very fine semolina and containing spices and vegetables.

Here's a money shot with the upma showing. I like to fold my pesarattu into a pretty triangle (I do the same with masala dosa), but you can also fold it over the filling in a D shape or roll it up into a sort of tube.

After this kind of breakfast some good South Indian style filter coffee is a must!

[kayb]

Duck bacon from Hudson Valley Foie Gras, over-easy eggs, and a yeast roll from the Farmers' Market with fig jam. Broke one of the egg yolks, so I don't have the proper runniness factor....

[kitchensqueen]

We were too hungry to even think about taking pictures, but we had pulled pork, jalapeno cornbread, breakfast potatoes and scrambled eggs this morning. Breakfast of champions.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

A slice of apple pie.

[andiesenji]

Scrambled eggs with chicken livers (for two). With a toasted crumpet - delicious!

[andiesenji]

Today, a simple breakfast of griddle cakes:

Great grandma Sweeney's *** "Cream feather griddle cakes"

With a sausage patty (not shown).

*** Praised as being "light as a feather" and remembered fondly by her descendants.

Good with or without syrup and even good for a cold snack later - possibly wrapped around a sausage link!

Edited May 30, 2011 by andiesenji (log)

[Blether]

Those look light-as-a-feather - is grandma Sweeney's secret to remain a secret, Andie ?

Over here, lentil soup. Stock from the two tandoori chicken carcases; a couple of onions and a couple of carrots sweated in fat rendered from the skins; the leftover tandoori marinade added and boiled hard for 5 minutes, then the stock and a couple of handfuls of lentils. Simmered for 40 minutes and finally the last couple of tablespoons of cream tandoori gravy added:

With breadmaker white, and tomato salad to follow.

[percyn]

Breakfast today was Pumpernickel Bagel w/Nova Spread from Ess-A-Bagel in NYC.

Sorry, no pic

[Kim Shook]

Lots of good looking breakfasts, folks! Everything looks good, but Andie, your griddle cakes are speaking to me!

We got back from our vacation on Saturday night and this was the first breakfast I made:

Eggs, grilled baguette and some English bacon we found at WF. Neither the bread nor the bacon was as fantastic as we had on our trip, but it was still good!

Breakfast in England was superb! Most mornings we had the ‘buffet’ at our hotels – good breads, cheeses, fruit, etc. What I LOVED was a concoction of fruit, yoghurt and muesli that I had every single morning and will be eating at home, too! A couple of mornings we had the ‘full English’ – one was low brow complete with beans, the other was quite high brow with blood sausage – my first! I liked it quite well, actually! We ate LOTS of bacon and even teacakes.

[kitchensqueen]

Today we had pancakes with maple syrup, out on the back deck in this fine weather. And I baked up some jalanpeno and bacon corn muffins with sun dried tomatoes for tomorrow's breakfast - portable stuff is a must-have for the work days.

[andiesenji]

As requested, here is the griddle cake recipe which is pretty much as my grandmother wrote it down for me in 1950.

Great Grammaw Sweeney's Griddle cakes

2 cups white flour (soft wheat flour if you can find it - I used Hudson Cream)

3 teaspoons double acting baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt - rounded

2 tablespoons white sugar

1 egg - large

1 1/2 cups top cream (heavy cream)

1 tablespoon melted butter (a neutral flavored oil works too)

(Optional) Ice water if needed to thin the batter.

Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl.

Break the egg into the cream, beat with a fork and add the melted butter and mix well.

Put griddle on high heat and grease lightly (GG Sweeney used bacon rind but a cloth dipped in oil or oil lightly brushed onto the griddle works - and you can use a non-stick electric griddle, if you can get it hot enough.)

With a "cake beater" (whisk) mix the cream mixture into the dry ingredients until the batter is fairly smooth, some lumps are okay.

If it is too thick, add some ice water just till it will pour - batter will be fairly thick.

Ladle onto griddle in the size you like. The batter should puff evenly.

When you see bubbles and the edges beginning to look dry, turn them over

The second side won't take as long to cook as the first.

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If you like corn cakes you can use fine cornmeal instead of half the flour but add a tablespoon of corn flour (corn starch).

-A note from my grandmother Davis, nee Sweeney-

Some folks like sour milk griddle cakes and they are fine, but have a tangy taste that I don't enjoy. You can use clabbered cream but add a scant teaspoon of saleratus (baking soda) to the dry ingredients.

-A note from me. I used to use White Lily flour but it is not the same stuff as it was a few years ago but for this recipe it's better than all-purpose flour. I buy Hudson Cream because I like it better for cakes and such. Another one I use is Odlums but I have to order it and Hudson Cream is sold at Walmart.

[Deus Mortus]

Nicely crisped up Balkenbrij (A dutch dish, a bit like scrabble if I am to believe wikipedia) served on toast with mustard, scrambled eggs and some chives. A breakfast of champions.

Edited May 31, 2011 by Deus Mortus (log)