Mamta's Kitchen - A Family Cookbook
An Indian Breakfast?
It always surprises me how little attention cookery books pay to breakfast.
What would be a typical Indian breakfast both for perhaps 'food on the go' or a more formal 'sit down' breakfast?
After al, we are told it is the most important meal of the day!
Egads, when I go to visit family in India, breakfast is the same as lunch and dinner. Dal. And chapatis. And yoghurt. Not as many dishes as lunch/ dinner and without the pickles and onions and so on that are on the side.
Even if you love Indian food, it's easy to go crazy with the mundanity of eating the same things again and again, within a few days, because there's not even that much differentiation between breakfast, lunch and dinner!
When we go, we often end up reverting to toast (made from the oddest, slightly sweet, sliced bread available there) or if we're being spoiled, scrambled eggs with purees. But that's for weird Western girls who don't like dal!
Hello Winton
It is an interesting question. I typed half of it and then got interrupted, my massage lady turned up!
Breakfast will vary in each state of India. In the south, it is often Idlies, Upma, Dosa, Utthapam etc. In the north, it can be Stuffed Paratha one any of the numerous fillings (see recipes on site), Plain Paratha served with a vegetable bhaji of choice, Poories, Train Wale Sukhe Aloo, Savoury Vermicelli, Poha flattened rice, Semolina Halva, Vegetable Pakoras, Chilla Besan Pancakes and many other pancakes, jalebies with hot milk, Dalia (cracked wheat cooked in milk like porridge) to name just a few. Now a days, you also get a lot of toast, egg-boiled, fried or Omellette, are also popular. The most common one in the state of my origin will be some sort of paratha with butter or a vegetable dish.
Then there is a glass of hot milk with sugar and fresh fruits of the season. Tea/coffee are also very milky, often made in pure milk.
These are the dishes you will often see in a 5 Star hotel?s breakfast banquet in India.
I am amused to read my daughter?s reply ;-), you are so funny Kav, egads indeed! I can see your nose wrinkling at breakfast table in Roorkee! It is never chapatties, unless you come from a poor family. It is never dal for breakfast, always some vegetable dish to go with the parathas and poories. It is the same the other way round too. My siblings in India think it unpalatable to eat toasts and cereals day in a day out, the mundanity of it, LOL! Scrambled eggs have been popular with parathas and poories there anyway Kav, we used to have it long before you were even thought of Laugh. It is just that my brothers wife is not too keen to have eggs in the house, so they are not made very often. I agree with kav, the bread is pretty ordinary, like the cheapest sliced bread you will have here. That is why I am trying to get people to make their own bread there, not easy!
But I don't eat one cereal or toast daily! That would be dull too!
Even with cereals, there are SOOO many variations such as crunchy nut cornflakes or granola with fruit and nuts or muesli or porridge or cinnamon grahams or loops.
And toast can be with savoury marmite or sweet jam.
And sometimes I'll have eggs and they can be cooked in different ways.
And other times there's sausages or bacon or both!
And all of these are completely different to whatever one has for lunch and dinner.
If I had been given halva or purees for breakfast in Roorkee my nose would not have wrinkled up.
:)
This is sooooo funny, everyone in India thinks that English breakfast is very boring! You have to remember that the majority do only eat toast and cereal of some sort here, leaving cooked breakfast for the week-ends. Also, cooked breakfast is a lot like lunch and dinner of UK too, meat, eggs and two vegetables (beans and tomatoes), if you look at it from a foreighner's eyes. How very interesting it is to see these things through the eyes of other people, isn't it?
Wasn't it Somerset Maugham who said "the only way to eat well in England is to have breakfast three times a day." Hence the 'All-Day Breakfast?
As I'm usually at work during the week and my day starts early (way before me body it ready to eat) I tend to have to make a packed breakfast (in a similar vain ? vein ? vane ? to a packed lunch)...
Mostly it consists of a cereal (weetabix, porridge, even things like special K with nuts and berries) left in a sealed tub with the milk in over night. I eat it cold when I've fully woken up.. I also add fruit and berries depending on whats in (blue berries, strawberries, dried mixed fruit etc) and sometimes I might add a spoon of runny honey and a sprinkle of cinnamon to porridge.
Also depending on time of year I might just take a small box of fruit and berries to pick at (usually in summer months when I'm working towards losing a few pounds... I tend to bulk up over winter like a big ol bear..)
However I'm not to fussy about it being "traditional" breakfast fodder and have been known to have a ham sandwich, cold pizza/curry or any manner of other things that people might consider not for breakfast...
Come weekend (mainly Sunday) we tend to have a cooked breakfast which sounds like one meal but there are again many variations..
"Full English" type - (combinations of)
Usually Egg which could be poached, fried, scrambled
Bacon (fried)
Sausage (dry fried usually and different types like pork, cumberland, pork and black pudding)
Black Pudding sometimes makes an appearance (I microwave mine, don't like it fried, can't see reason to wait forever boiling it)
Mushrooms (fried)
Tomtatoes (tinned plum, fresh grilled or oven baked, fresh pan cooked into a thick tomato sauce)
Beans (if I really must.. not a big fan of the beans in ketchup with any meal.. I even think it spoils a good piece of toast to put beans on it)
Fried bread
Fried potaoto (rarely but sometimes if there is some leftover)
Then you get other cooked breakfasts -
Boiled egg with toast (soldiers)
Fried, Scrambled, Poached Egg on toast
My Scrambled egg with smoked salmon and toast
bacon sandwiches
Cheese on toast
and very rarely Omelette (not keen on them for some reason, think its the way it holds fat and the outer skin that tastes overcooked?)
Steve
for me, in the South, it has to be masala dosa, or idlis, washed down with mosambi juice.
Thanks for all your answers - very interesting.
Mamta, if you get time isn't there enough material here to add a 'breakfast page' or an addition to the 'menu planning' section?
Steve, the black pudding has already been cooked, you can eat it cold as it is (I do). I remember being up at Cambridge when they served black pudding in the college refectory one morning for breakfast. All the cooking staff gathered around in amazement (they fried it).
If you don't like the big bits of fat in black pudding, try the Scottish variety, no fat, but pearl barley instead, wonderful. Makes up for Hagis!
I haven't seen any Indian recipes which use animal blood, but I know of a Nepalese one. Its in a Nepalese cookbook, terrible reproduction of photos, but a real gem of a book on Nepalese cuisine! (published privately).
It is a good idea Winton, let me look into it. Sooo many things to write, it is never ending!
I've never even dreamed of trying an Indian breakfast: the choice for me is between British and French. I'd rather restrict Indian food to lunch and dinner (especially dinner).
I find that I'm completely contrary re breakfast: for years in Northumberland, I insisted on fresh orange juice, black coffee and a croissant (French breakfast).
In recent years here in France, I've reverted to bacon with fried tomato on toast, with caf? cr?me.
But it has to be said that Indian food re-heated the next day is fab. I occasionally dip into a bit of last night's Indian chicken in the morning (but only over the weekends).
A lot of this is sheer habit.
Phil
We haven't mentioned Kedgeree yet - always a treat for the weekend.
I try for the healthy weetabix, milk and fruit in the week but then then remember the cold curry in the 'fridge..... Mind you I could not manage a 'full English' without generous helpings of HP or chilli sauce.
Kedgeree is not Indian though based on Khitcheri. Lapis, I cook black pudding for my OH (I hate the stuff), but he only likes the one from Scotland, says local one isn't the same. Eating the BP is like being Dracula, no? LOL! Preserved blood for when Darcula can't find fresh blood!
The Best Black Pudding I've had comes from "Buryblackpuddings.co.uk", I've had them from all over (although not Scotland) and they are in a league of their own (even my local butcher who make fantastic sausage with black pudding in them, has his own blackpudding that just isn't quite as good)!
Steve
I agree with Askcy Bury black pudding is the tops, you can buy it in Tescos where I live and that is York
Clonakilty black puddings (and white puddings) are fantastic too. Mmm!
Despite having grown up with black pudding in Scotland, with the usual bad food memories, I've re-converted to it: it's served in lovely Spanish tapas in Barcelona, and the French love it.
We chop up an apple and cook it with a bit of cinnamon, which goes really well with the Antillais black pudding we buy here (with spices, inclduing cinnamon).
Phil
My breakfast this morning...I was going to make the usual bacon and egg but noticed we had a tin of cherry tomatoes (normally we get the large plum ones for Sundays)... So suddenly my brain held a meeting without me an decided on this
Soft cream scrambled eggs, gently placed cherry tomatoes, crispy fried bread croutons, crispy bacon scatterings (can I make up descriptions of things as I go along?..lol )and a sprinkle of parsley (just for colour.. did want to put some basil on but we are out...)
Steve
Steve: did your brain hold a meeting with itself?
This is not impossible, I think: different bits of the brain can communicate with each other, without 'our' intervention. Happens to me all the time.
Or perhaps we are both as mad as hatters!
Phil
Mamta, yes traditionally Hat makers worked with mercury for part of the process... which they aborbed a lot of in the carear. Mercury poisoning was rife in the hatting population which caused problems with brain function, speech etc and would give the appearance of being "mad"..
Steve
Mum! The expression mad as a hatter is said to have originated in LUTON!!!
You should know it! We used to talk about it as kids!
Luton was a huge hat making centre back in it's day and, as AskCy says, the mercury used in the process drove the hatters mad!
While a student I visited a lovely lady in a nursing home as a volunteer for three years. She had been a milliner all her life and was suffering from early dementia and MS. Both were attributed by her Doctors to her lifetime's craft.