Mexico

Group A - MEXICO

What was it?

Huevos rancheros – eggs fried with salsa, served on a tortilla with salsa, cheese and avocado

How was it?

As with lots of Mexican food this was a wonderful mess of different textures, temperatures and tastes. It felt wholesome and cohesive, and especially hearty. Although chaotic in appearance there was a balance to the dish; richness, sweetness, heat, all countered by cool, salty, plainness elsewhere. The tortilla kept it all together.

Overall thoughts.

It took a bit longer to prepare than some breakfasts do, but this was a big return for the amount of effort put in. If I had added some refried beans it would have even fitted in with my requirements for a full English breakfast (egg, beans, carb, fleshy element). This is an early front runner in the World Cup, and will probably go a lot further than the Mexican football team.

If it was a Mexican footballer?

Slight but with lots of dynamism and flair, we're looking at Giovani dos Santos.

Brazil

Group A - BRAZIL

What was it?

Papaya, coffee, cheese roll, and grilled cheese baguette

How was it?

There was a wonderful contrast between the soft and sweet scented papaya, and the crunchy saltiness of the grilled cheese baguette. The cheese roll added further textures, with a crisp outside giving way to chewy interior. Very stodgy and also salty, but the moistness of the papaya balanced things out.

NB. I had planned to make my own pao de quiejo but was unable to find any tapioca or cassava flour in Bexhill. The bakery-bought cheese scone sounded like it would be the best thing to emulate the flavours and textures of the Brazillian food, and made things a lot easier for me too :-)

Overall thoughts.

Relatively simple to prepare, this breakfast offered a nice simple balance of flavours and textures, feeling substantial enough to kick off the day. A pleasing opener for the hosts.

If it was a Brazilian footballer?

Seemingly plain yet secretly subtle defender Thiago Silva.

Breakfast World Cup mission statement

(Originally written on 11th June 2014)

As followers of the blog will attest, I am a fan of football. I try to play it, watch too much of it, talk about it far too frequently. In many ways this mirrors my breakfast fandom. Football is my favourite sport and breakfast is my favourite meal.

For the uninitiated, the football World Cup rolls round once every 4 years, and 32 of the best teams from all sides of the globe meet to challenge for the title of world champions. This year I will be supporting England, as I have at every world cup since 1998. Now England's chances of winning are regarded as slim (I reckon they'll make the quarter finals), but how would they fare if the countries battled it out, not on the football pitch, but on the breakfast table?

Breakfast culture varies greatly around the world. I was flabbergasted when I found out that the UK eats around 90% or so of the world's baked beans. Why aren't all the other countries eating them for breakfast like us? There must be something else going on, and so I intend to use the world cup as an excuse to take a brief tour around the culinary world to see what tricks are being missed, and to see who can rightfully stake a claim to the best breakfast in the world.

For the next 32 days, the duration of the football World Cup, I will start my day with a vegetarian breakfast (I remain vegetarian) associated with each of the different countries that are involved in events in Brazil. I will then rate the countries against each other, using the same tournament framework as the football competition, and eventually I shall crown one nation as Champions of Breakfasts of Champions.

During my meticulous research I ran into a couple of problems:

a.) some countries don't tend to have breakfast in the same way Brits do

b.) some countries share very similar “traditional” breakfasts

c.) some countries really love meat

In these cases I have taken the odd liberty here and there, in order to make for a more varied and interesting contest. For example, I have read that lots of Australians do not eat steak and eggs for breakfast, even as a special treat. This dish does have a historical significance (so I've read) though, and so I will be doing my best to recreate it as it is significantly different to other breakfasts I will be trying. At the time of writing I'm not quite sure how I will recreate steak in a vegetarian manner, but by the time I put Australia to the test I can assure you I will have found a way.

It's a big undertaking. I don't think I'll have ever gone for so long a period without toast and marmite (might have to shoehorn vegemite into the Australian breakfast) but it should be an exciting adventure. It may be difficult bringing a samba rhythm and carnival spirit to my kitchen between 6am and 8am on weekdays but I'll give it my best shot.

Gabbing with Gareth at Breakfast at Tiffany's

May 19th.

I'm not a fan of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. First watched by me on New Year's Day a few years ago, I found its conclusion ultimately dissatisfying with no probative value, and its overplaying of what was at its opening a very good song was frustrating. Admittedly, the scene where the kids are all sitting round talking about something, and the camera circles the group, and there's lots of emotions, and it's all ad-libbing by the actors, that bit is impressive. Ultimately though, the whole thing felt inconsequential and there was too much of unlikeable characters doing unlikeable things, and so when the film closed to Simple Minds (again...) and Emilio Estevez with his fist raised pointlessly in the air, a meaningless gesture from a paper champion, I felt as though 2000 and whatever had gotten off to the worst possible start.

When I was younger, I often got Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Breakfast Club mixed up. I do the same thing with The Princess Bride and The Princess Diaries. Fortunately, Brighton does not have a cafe called The Breakfast Club, and so there was little risk of me going to the wrong venue for my rendezvous with Gareth Strachan.

Gareth is a friend that I have met through past and present housemates Tim and Zia, who all worked together in Ottakars bookshop in Guildford many moons ago. Back then Gareth also organised a couple of film festivals in the town, at which, before we'd even met, he introduced me to some great cinema which I would recommend to anyone; The Seventh Seal, The Seven Samurai, Shaolin Soccer and Riding Giants. I doubt he ever chose to screen The Breakfast Club at one of these events.

These days, Gareth is more concerned with creating film that curating it. He has recently applied for a place on a prestigious screenwriting MA course and all fingers are crossed that he is successful in his application. He has previously written plays that have been performed, and well-received I might add, and this creative experience would ensure that he would be superb in this field.

It would be quite an involved course though. Doing a MA is generally an all-consuming venture. I previously did my Creative and Critical MA part-time whilst continuing to work full-time, and so I was able to offer a wee bit of advice to him about this side of things. Generally speaking though, Gareth is driven and would like this to be an inroad towards a career. As much as he enjoys teaching and his greeting card line is beginning to take off, he feels his real talents lie in the creative writing. All fingers are indeed crossed.

Gareth is also not the best at time-keeping, and so I had a decent amount of time in Breakfast at Tiffany's with which to take in its ambience. I took in all of its ambience. We both agree that Brighton is a very easy place in which to simply exist and have a nice time and that's exactly what I did, enjoying Heart FM, the wooden furniture arranged so spaciously and the multiple pictures of Audrey Hepburn adorning the walls. Couldn't see Emilio Estevez anywhere though.

And so, the breakfast:

Veggie Set

Egg, veg. Sausage, tomato (fresh, tinned or grilled), beans, mushrooms, and 2 hash browns, bubble & squeak, and 2 toast or hash brown

Veggie Set - £5.95

I had eaten at Breakfast at Tiffany's a few times previously, but those jaunts had been a long time ago. The one thing that had stuck with me the most from those visits was that the cafe was one of a select few that offered bubble and squeak as part of its vegetarian breakfast, and it was with gusto that I launched myself into it when it arrived. It is a mystery to me why more places don't serve it; it adds a different dimension, both in taste and texture, and is a quintessentially British breakfast item. Here again it did not disappoint, bringing a soft and rosemaric presence to the dish.

Its potatoey cousin, the hash brown, came in at the other end of the texture scale, incredibly and satisfying crispy, whilst retaining a tuberous taste which was sufficiently different to the greenery-laden B&S. The other carbohydrate provider, the toast, was both buttered and plentiful. Now, the menu does say that I had a choice as to whether I had a mound of toast or a further hash brown. Unfortunately, when ordering, I was not presented with either of the choices indicated by the menu. I would have probably opted for toast in any case, but it would have been good to have been able to vocalise this preference.

Note the application of finger to 'thinking cleft'

The other advertised choice regarded the tomatoes. For me, most of the time it would be a straight toss-up between tinned or grilled. Unfortunately I was again not given the opportunity to be the master of my own destiny but fortunately again they successfully guessed that I would have opted for tinned tomatoes on this occasion. Perhaps the kitchen staff at Breakfast at Tiffany's are clairvoyant? That would be a welcome innovation in breakfasting, and would help to combat that gross vagueness that often plagues the most urgent fastbreaker. These tomatoes were plump buds that exuded a great amount of juice with prompting, and were a fortunate success.

Prompting was also required by the egg. It was solid from the outset, but with careful probing it suddenly yielded a warm blanket of yolk, rather in the manner in which you might gingerly explore a skin lesion before accidentally bursting it. Other moisture was provided inevitably by the baked beans, whose caramel richness prompted me to think of much more aesthetically pleasing imagery entirely.

The other downside, aside from the lack of choice on ordering, came in the form of the flesh options. Both the mushrooms and the sausages suffered from the same blandness as The Breakast Club. The mushrooms, seemingly fried in oil, and the sausage, of the glamorgan genus, were lacking in character like the majority of John Hughes' cast.

At the final credits began to roll over mine and Gareth's breakfast, I felt satisfied with what I had eaten. The meal was large, varied and interesting. Although it didn't blow me away, lacking the ever-present glamour of Ms. Hepburn, it was warm, pleasant and satisfying. Perhaps the pictures of Audrey in the cafe are misleading, and in fact the venue is named after the mid 90s chart hit by Deep Blue Something. The breakfast here was much more reminiscent of enjoyable chart-bothering pop rock-by-numbers than being a dish that could make you divinely and utterly happy.

Function: bubble and squeak raised the homely factor 4/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Value: felt decent 4/5
Taste: on the whole, satisfactory 3/5

Presentation: solid positioning 3/5

Venue: lots of space, but order options not given 3/5

Overall: the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there: 3.5/5

Joining Janoh at Moksha Cafe

April 20th.

Ah, the good old days. One of the most regular areas of conversation around the cooked breakfast table. When you are too tired/hungover to bear thinking about the future, great comfort can be found by looking back to a brighter time before dehydration and lack of sleep took hold. I haven't really had many chats about the good old days on this blog thus far, but when I went for breakfast with Ian "Janoh" Humberstone over the Easter weekend we managed to have a decent one.

Janoh is a friend from the good old days when I studied at Exeter University. Since we finished our studies there I have only seen him sparingly; for a short period when he was considering a move to Brighton, once when I was up in Edinburgh for a family event (which led to us climbing up Arthur's Seat with a birdsong vinyl), and once when he visited Brighton to perform a gig in our living room. Once again, Janoh was coming to Brighton to perform some of his folk music.

At present, Janoh is involved in Folklore Tapes; "an ongoing research and heritage project exploring the folkloric arcana of the farthest-flung recesses of Great Britain and beyond...through abstracted musical reinterpretation and experimental visuals." He was on his way back to Exeter in association with this project and dropped in for some Easter-based shenanigans along with some performance. If you click on that link you will see that a whole lot of love and dedication is going into this project. He's a talented chap with passion strong enough to haul lost folklore out from the archives and into the fresh sunlight of the now. He truly is the folklore equivalent of the cooked breakfast, aiding the re-energising transition from past to future.

After the breakfast I was going to be heading to a nearby pub to watch a couple of football matches. In a nebulous manner we began talking about our supporting of football, and how for Janoh the teams that were in the Premiership at the time when he first started following football are the teams that should be in the Premiership now. He still can't believe that Oldham Athletic aren't regularly facing off against Manchester United and co. on a weekly basis.

It is funny how the connexions we make when we are young are often ones that stay strong with us throughout our lives. There's a lot to be said about that with regards to folk music, and how old a form of art it is. You could also argue that breakfast shares a similar venerability. If you were that way inclined (like me).

And so, the breakfast:

 Vegetarian Breakfast

Grilled field mushroom with roasted vine tomatoes, wilted spinach, free range eggs, baked beans and sourdough toast

Vegetarian Breakfast - £7.25

Now, was this a large amount of food, or was the plate small? It's difficult to tell in retrospect just from looking at the photo, but my sourdough toast did happen to topple of the plate on more than one occasion. This proved distracting when all I wanted to do was rip into my breakfast (after some careful painstaking note-taking of course). When I was able to relax without worrying about whether the breakfast would remain on the plate, I was able to enjoy some good warm flavours.

Most of the dish's components were very juicy. The tomatoes and mushrooms were positively sweating. The good kind of sweating, from vigorous exercise, rather than the bad kind that comes from being overweight and sitting in front of a computer indoors all day. Flavours backed up their juice, with the tomatoes carrying a rich fruitiness and the mushrooms seasoned with pepper. Slight disjunction was to be found with their texture however, with peppercorns present upon the otherwise smooth 'shrooms, and the vine doing nothing for me. It's only purpose seemed to be to suggest wholesome freshness, and in this capacity it failed.

Janoh (left) and Robin (right) performing some folk

The breakfast, you see, seemed to be swimming in either juice or butter, and when I finished eating there remained a lake of this residue. This undid any aspirations of healthy freshness that a rough wiry bit of vine may have had, and though such a lake was not necessarily a bad thing in itself, there were just not enough carbohydrate components on the plate to soak it up. Only the rigorously crunchy toast was there to do this. More carbs, either extra toast or some hash browns for instance, would have made a massive difference.

The majority of this lake was seemingly provided by the spinach. This was incredibly buttery. Peppery as well, but moreso buttery. The other moisture providing items were far less fluid. The beans were warm, silken, and sweet, but not moist. The eggs (I opted for poached) disappointingly had solid yolks, rather like hard boiled eggs. This laid blame of the juice lake mainly on the doorstep of the spinach. Naughty spinach.

Overall, it was a tasty breakfast, but with a few logistical flaws. My enjoyment of the meal would have been much greater had some extra carbohydrate options been present, to aid in soaking up the all-pervading juice and to provide a wider textural variety. A large plate would also have made a difference. Moksha is a pleasant cafe with good ambience which does great work with hot drinks and cakes. It still needs a little bit more though when cooked breakfasts are concerned. A larger table wouldn't have gone amiss either.

Function: in parts homely, in others stressful - 3/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: good strong flavours abounded - 4/5
Value: possibly a bit too much for these problems - 2/5
Presentation: good bean segregation but plate felt small - 3/5
Venue: nice but better suited to hot drinks - 3/5

Overall: bit too juicy - 3/5

Reconnaissance with Ryk (likewise Lou) at Temptation Cafe

April 19th.

Few could have predicted what would happen on Saturday 19th April.

Both myself and Louis Browne can count ourselves fortunate that when placed in a situation that occurs less frequently than Halley's Comet, we were with someone that has been studying the dark arts of improvisation for over a year. When you stumble across something that has no right to be there, when an event occurs that should never happen, when you end up somewhere that shouldn't really exist, the only thing you can do is improvise. And with Ryk Waters, improvise we did.

It had been a fairly standard breakfast. Ryk, a fellow member of Kemp Town F.C., had given me some good advice with regards to improving my life. Basically, all that needs to be done is to use the responses "thanks a latte!" and "tea-riffic!" when receiving the appropriate hot beverage in a cafe environment. It's as simple as that. Set phasers to pun. The three of us (for we were joined by club captain Lou) also chatted about exercise, standing on logs, and future TV hit Hangover Quest (Ready Steady Cook contested by those suffering from deep existential crises). It was all going to plan, up until we made the fateful decision to leave central Brighton and head up towards Hanover.

We had decided to go up to Hanover to seek a venue where Lou could watch some football in the close vicinity of his girlfriend's house. Ryk suggested The Constant Service, and so we began our ascent up from the base camp of Grand Parade, traversing the treacherous slope of Albion Hill. Hills; so often portrayed as an otherworld in folklore and traditional storytelling. Hills are an escape, a retreat, a wilderness away from the intrigues and rush of urban dwelling. The hills are a nowhere when unimaginable things can and do happen. It is in the hills where prophets can have their visions and the unwary can meet their end at the hands of fantastical beasts.

A combination of these two things occured to us on that fateful day. We encountered the Hanover Plug.

Artist's impression of the Hanover Plug

Many have spoken of the Hanover Plug, always in hushed tones. Songs have been sung. Carvings have been made. Intricate carvings, by rustic artisans and penniless wordsmiths. Carvings upon the collective consciousness of generations. All of the generations. Despite the indelible effect that the Hanover Plug has had upon Sussex, vast numbers dispute its very existence. Many a time has an individual descended from a journey into those very hills, told others of that sighting that he had made, only for his story to be dismissed as the ravings of a madman. He's crazy, the people say. He's suffering from a lack of oxygen, or overexposure to puns. They pat him on his head and send him on his way if he is lucky, otherwise he will be cast out of the city, pelted with stones, and forced to write his breakfast blog from the safety of a thorn bush on the Downs.

Well, if there's one thing you choose to believe from this blog entry, let it be the review of the breakfast. But if you have space in your heart ready for all of the truth in our world, then please believe me when I write this: that day, we three saw the Hanover Plug.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian Breakfast

Griddled halloumi, balsamic field mushrooms, wilted spinach, roasted tomatoes, free range Sussex eggs as you like them, fresh toast and baked beans

Vegetarian Breakfast - £8.95

"When you cook them right / Such a delight"

Louis Browne

Temptation Cafe was a pleasant place to spend a Saturday morning. Although it felt somewhat like a canteen at a college or uni (the combination of the furniture and flooring), this was offset by fine musical choices, local art on the walls and knitted tea cosies that resembled moles burrowing out of the ground.

It was also a pleasure to have halloumi served as part of the breakfast. The halloumi on offer here was a classic example of how this could be the premium flesh option for the vegetarian; a rich salty flavour twinned with that smooth and chewy texture that has me salivating just thinking about it. This was perfectly cooked and set the tone for the rest of the dish.

21st Century Scott and Oates

Rich flavours were prevalent across the plate, thanks to some thoughtful cooking from the Temptation Cafe staff. The mushrooms too were cooked to perfection; soft but also chewable, with a strength to the tongue being underlined with a peppery aftertaste. The spinach also benefited from extra care in the kitchen, maintaining a freshness to touch but with an extra buttery comfort to them. Little intricacies like these went a long way in establishing the breakfast as a potent force.

There was a great variety of textures on offer to accompany those powerful rhythms making my tastebuds bop. The toast was carved softly by an artisan, providing a crunchy hug. The fruitiness of beans washed like running soup. The poached (though they could have been scrambled or fried) eggs were pure and lush, offering the silken explosion that I always yearn for. The tomatoes were sharp, their flesh felt bright in my mouth. The mouthfeel, oh the mouthfeel. It was top.

I'm not a fan of the M&S approach to making food seem special. No matter how many adjectives you add, Dorset sea-salt and cask-aged Balsamic vinegar is still going to be plain old salt and vinegar to me. Despite Temptation Cafe utilising this nefarious tactic, I was able to forgive them upon eating their wares. It was all well-cooked, with an air of care that came across on the plate. The only thing holding it back from greatness was the price, and perhaps that campus aura. Still, in a world of uncertainty, the Temptation Cafe can be held up as a place where you won't need to improvise in the fastbreaking stakes.

Function: warming and feisty - 4/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: rich and thoughtful - 5/5
Value: just about justifiable - 3/5
Presentation: practical and pretty - 4/5
Venue: could have been a bit more homely - 3/5

Overall: a tempting prospect if you're in the area - 4/5

 Let them know on Twitter if you've spotted the Hanover plug:
@rykwaters
@loubrowneIOW

Authentic or hoax?

#HanoverPlug

Lounging with Louise at the Alcampo Lounge

March 20th.

As my previous post alluded, Brighton moves fast. When I used to live just off of St. James' Street, I noticed one particular takeaway change its name at least five times in three years (my personal favourite name was Armani Kebabs). Another "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" moment was the surreal change that Sawadee Thai restaurant underwent, when it became an Italian for about a week before reverting to Thai. Inexplicable, especially as both its Thai and Italian incarnations provided delicious food. It was as though the owner had gone on holiday for a week, and whoever had been left in charge decided to go rogue, Colonel Kurtz-style.

One place in Brighton in particular that is currently undergoing a lot of change is London Road. Many old establishments have been receiving facelifts or flashy re-openings, and in other places new, exciting enterprises are starting up. There are new student residencies being built to open in the autumn, and so it looks as though lots of funds are being made available in order to have the area looking as enticing as possible for when the scholars come to town. One of these new, exciting enterprises is the Alcampo Lounge.

I had no idea that The Lounges were a chain. Heck, I didn't even notice that this place existed until Louise Wilde suggested we go there for our breakfast, despite walking down London Road on my way home from work most days. I first met Louise through my old friend and bandmate Olli, and when we played a series of benefit gigs for the Big Lemon bus company she made a couple of...erm...big lemons...for us to garnish the venues with. She is a very creative and enterprising lass with great skill, and if there was ever to be a further need for football-sized lemons then there are few people in Brighton better to call upon.

At the time of our meeting, Louise was searching for a different direction, a new vocation. This meant that she had a lot of free time and was spending a fair bit of it on the Internet. As I well know, the combination of free time and Internet often leads down the road of procrastination, but as Louise discovered procrastination is not always fruitless. During a particular session, she entered a competition and ended up winning a holiday to Switzerland! The moral to this story? Internet procrastination is definitely a good thing. I gave up YouTube for Lent in an attempt to be more productive, but as you may have noticed in the gap between blog posts here, this hasn't exactly been the case...

So we found ourselves sitting in the Alcampo Lounge, a mammoth place that sprung up overnight like a mutant snowdrop. It looked nice, with lots of comfy wooden furniture and sofas, and also featuring a book share in one corner. It felt ambitious. Its mere existence was a statement of intent. Would this ambition and intent be matched in its food?

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian Breakfast

Sweetcorn fritters, hash browns, grilled tomato, baked beans, button mushrooms, spinach, hummus, fried egg, and toast

Vegetarian Breakfast - £6.95

It looked pretty cool. The above photo should serve as an "after" shot; here is a "before":

It was as though the toast was a hat! This was pleasing. Also pleasing was the fact that I got a free filter coffee thrown in with the meal. Less pleasing was the absence of hummus in the mix, which would have been interesting to sample in a full cooked breakfast, but I was still to experience sweetcorn fritters for the first time, and for this I was thankful.

These then, the most exciting of the components, were first to be tried. They were pleasant; light, with a hint of coriander and a similarity to falafel in texture. They would not have been out of place as part of an Indian meal, and although the flavour wasn't strong they did provide a nice difference in texture to the plate.

Bonus tea too? Bribery!

The other carb-y elements, the toast and hash browns, were polar opposites to each other on the carbohydrate scale. The toast was soft and limp whilst the hash browns had a wonderful hard crispiness to their outer shells. This thin crunch gave way to lovely fluffy innards.

Unfortunately, many of the components charged with bringing strong flavours to the breakfast did not manage to rise to the occasion. The beans were slightly bland, and the egg, despite a bulbous yolk, had an anonymous white to it. The mushrooms were dry and tasted plain. The tomato had a good texture to it, soft, fleshy and warm, but lacked any sharpness.

Each of these items could have had an additional edge to them, which would really have made the breakfast a more exciting proposition. Only the spinach managed to achieve any kind of power in its flavour, being salty and rich. The care shown in the cooking of the spinach should have been extended to the rest of the dish.

A lot of flavours went missing (figuratively), and perhaps the dish would have been aided by the hummus not going missing (literally). Ultimately this breakfast was a case of something looking good on paper and not delivering on the plate. Talking the talk but failing to walk the walk. Is this an accusation that could be levelled at the Alcampo Lounge in general? Potentially. Both the venue and the meal seemingly rose swiftly out of nowhere in a glorious statement of intent, but both left me feeling slightly disappointed in the aftermath.

Function: lacking in fiery heart - 2/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: disappointingly shallow - 2/5
Value: decent amount matched in price - 3/5
Presentation: superbly laid out - 5/5
Venue: looks good, masking other shortcomings - 3/5

Overall: as powerful as lounge music - 3/5