The Perfect Breakfast

As I have traveled the world I have had numerous forms of breakfast, are hotel breakfasts the best? No washing up? Every from deep fried grasshoppers to sumptuous buffets and each has left its memory, some of them unfavorably.

My favorite still remains a full traditional English Breakfast although a couple of others have come very close, including one just this week.

There is something to sitting down at a table and picking from a menu selection that goes on for about a page and all that for just one course…. a veritable pick and mix.

The perfect breakfast has to be home made sausages (preferably pork or beef), back bacon, scrambled eggs, black pudding, deviled kidneys, lightly fried liver, fried tomatoes, wild mushrooms and fried bread all served with copious quantities of Twinning’s English Breakfast Tea.

If you really want to go overboard there should also be kippers and an offering of porridge but I cannot face porridge.

Unlimited servings of toast with traditional Seville orange marmalade and good butter finish off the meal, although the toast should be prepared individually each time before serving.

This whole experience should last about an hour

On a trip to Scotland the perfect breakfast was also served with Haggis – an acquired taste for sure but a wonderful addition to the meal. I cannot understand why people do not eat this delicacy more often especially for breakfast. It was a great way to start the day especially as we were off up the mountains to do some skiing.

An addition to my favorite breakfasts was just the other day and unfortunately kills the argument above.

After a night’s gentle drinking with a friend in his bar in Phang Nga Thailand he invited me to sample the local breakfast. Now I have had a number of Thai breakfasts over the years and to be honest have not been that impressed. This one however reinforced the argument of trying everything before judging.

Arriving in the local market that was just starting to set up at 3am we made our way to what can only be described as a garage where you would park your car. Inside were a number of plastic chairs and tables. Outside a table with banana leaves, a tub of Khao Kneow (sticky rice) a large pile of fried onions and a big wok full of hot fat in which was frying chicken.

We had to wait for the chicken to be cooked but it was worth the wait. Taking a ball of the sticky rice you dunked it into the fried chicken and then ate it along with a bite of the chicken.

What an explosion of tastes it was – who would have thought that rice, onions and chicken would have gone so well.

So now I have 2 perfect breakfasts – one that takes time to prepare and an hour to eat and another that takes minutes to prepare and about the same amount of time to eat.