Scrambled Eggs

When I say Europe I mean Northern Europe; countries with no green in their flags, people who wear topcoats in winter. An Italian breakfast, unless you are in a swanky hotel, is not the thing at all; a pastry filled with cream or jam accompanied by a super-strong espresso. If feeling a little delicate it can be turbo-charged (like our PMs vision for the UK economy) by ordering a caffè corretto con grappa. To digress again, some years ago in Venice when ordering an early coffee I asked Robert what he’d like; “same as you.” I had two cups of coffee that morning.

The Northern European breakfast has good coffee, a selection of breads made with a variety of grains, often inseminated with seeds, meats and cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, yogurts, muesli and fruit. The breakfasts in Norway were especially good but this year Moldova and Ukraine were well up to standard.

Now we must turn to the British breakfast and I sense readers from this sceptred isle about to take umbrage if a say a word agin a BB. Hold your horses, I must digress to give you the full sceptre plus island quote:

(Richard II, Shakespeare)

Boris Johnson is a good purveyor of optimism but Shakespeare got there first. Now back to brekker. Black pudding, kippers, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, fried bread, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausages are the backbone of a British breakfast. It may not be advisable to indulge if the plan for the day is to take a look at The Times crossword but, golly, if you are walking up to the Devil’s Pulpit it’s just the ticket.

The weakest point in a buffet brekker are the scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs should be freshly made to order. If I may digress, when I was staying in The Pacific-Union Club in San Francisco the other day, they were so health-conscious that they offered scramblers made of whites only (or was that a club rule?). The Speech House scramblers were solidified, dry bricks made, perhaps, of eggs. But yesterday morning they were lovely and runny; the apotheosis of a scrambled egg ; R and I had them instead of a fried egg. Why the improvement? A different chef and the waitress told me how pleased he’d be that we’d noticed. So while I wave a flag for a good British fry-up it does need to be cooked with care. Something I haven’t mentioned is soda bread, a sine qua non of breakfast in Ireland. When the Good Lord chucked down manna he was thinking soda bread.