Capital Breakfasts

You might remember, way, way back at the very dawn of the year, I enjoyed a rather fine breakfast at Duke's Brew and Que and resolved to seek out London's other great breakfasts to see if the Duke could be matched or perhaps even bested...

It went the way of most resolutions made at that time of year, obviously.

Yes, I know. I've let my readers down, I've let myself down, but most of all, I've let breakfast down.

It's the-most-important-meal-of-the-day, so it is, and I've done gone and let it down by utterly failing to stick to my pledge.

Well, until now that is.

Look, I'm not really a morning person. It's a lot of effort getting up and leaving the house before I've even properly woken up. It's hard enough on work days. And I don't even have an appetite until lunchtime usually.

But enough excuses. You've had to wait a long while, so, to celebrate Ben Viveur post No. 150,  here's a double review of the breakfast fayre from two of London's big meaty heavyweights: Simpson's in the Strand and the Hawksmoor Guildhall.

Can silly money buy the best breakfast in London or just the most expensive?

Ten food trends I suppose I ought to have an opinion on

People occasionally come up to me and ask my opinion on various things.

Usually it's something along the lines of  'where's the best vegan restaurant in North Dakota that's open after midnight on Sundays?' or 'which pubs in London serve a hemp and raspberry stout and do a full breakfast -  as a child's portion?'

I give them the best answers I can, and then try to veer the conversation towards a topic where I have strongly held, staunchly right-wing opinions, in the hope that they'll run away like a simpering jackal.

You already know what I think about some of the big issues. Like tank beer, the horsemeat 'scandal', and why it's a fucking Marathon bar, not a S**ckers.

So, for a change, here's my take on some less important stuff. The trivialities that don't keep me awake at night.

It'll save you having to come up and ask me!

The Linguine Experiment?

Like the proverbial physician, my bacon-burnt mouth healed itself, though not without a thirst for breakfasty revenge.

Bacon, Eggs, Sauce of brown; O how may I demand satisfaction of thee?!?

Well, the idea came to me while shopping for ingredients for two seemingly unrelated meals: Let's cook a pasta dish containing only the staple ingredients of an English Breakfast (and pasta, obviously). Yeah, that'll learn 'em.

The more I thought about it, the bigger the challenge seemed. Instinctively linguine (or tagliatelle or spaghetti or whatever) is just crying out for a sauce of onions, basil, oregano, red wine, red peppers and Parmesan - all things I'd have to do without.

Instead, I got to use bacon, sausage, table condiments and, as a radical gamble, pink grapefruit juice. It just felt right, and besides, there are plenty of dishes that call for lemon, lime and occasionally orange, so why not give the black sheep of the citrus family a rare outing?

And the recipe works. Pretty much. Just not as revenge.

It seemed obvious to whack a lightly poached egg on top and let the gooey yolk run into the linguine as a final flourish, so that's what I did.

But egg-poaching is fiendishly hard to get right, with a very poor effort-to-reward ratio, which is why I hardly ever attempt to poach eggs unless absolutely necessary.

Consequently, being all out of practice, I somehow managed to get a load of eggshell in the pan, reached in to remove it and succeeded in not only destroying the egg, but also burning my finger...

They fucking got me again.

Full English Breakfast Linguine

Ingredients - serves any number

Linguine, fresh, as much as you need
Smoked sausage, a couple, chopped into bite-size bits
Smoked Bacon, chopped
Eggs, one per person, to be poached at last minue
Mushrooms, a few per person, chopped
Tomatoes, about one large per person, chopped
Black Pepper

Tomato Ketchup
Brown Sauce
Pink Grapefruit juice
Olive Oil
Butter


Method

Heat the oil and butter in a big sautee pan, and fry the bacon, sausage and mushrooms until lightly brown.

 

It's like two meals in one!

Add the tomatoes and cook for a few more minutes, before turning the heat down, adding black pepper, ketchup, brown sauce and grapefruit juice to taste, then cover and leave to simmer for 20 minutes.

Cook your linguine in a big pot in boiling water until done, then drain, and pour in your sauce, tossing vigourously so that the pasta is covered with the strange, breakfasty concoction.

Finally poach each person an egg. Carefully. And don't overdo them. You need a runny yolk.

Plate up the pasta, put the poached egg on top, prick it with a fork and then maybe sprinkle some black pepper on top of it all.

Be very careful when eating this meal: it combines breakfast and dinner ingredients, so you might get all confused and end up going to bed in the morning or something. In fact, fuck it. Do exactly that. It's a free country'n'shit. See if I care (which I don't, obviously).

Typically you'd expect to serve a sausagey, bacony pasta dish with an elegant Italian Red, but due to the breakfastyness, this would probably go quite well with a glass of fruit juice or a strong black coffee.

Enjoy!