Experimental Cookery Breakfast #1: A Healthier Full Monty

The last time I had a full (English) breakfast was the morning after Uncle Mic's birthday party. (The 'English' is in parentheses because there is also such a thing as a full Scottish breakfast, wherein you replace the optional black pudding with haggis. The haggis isn't optional, since without it you're back to a full English.) Now, while the bed and breakfast at which we were staying was very nice, the staff were friendly, and the food was mostly good, the breakfast was less than ideal, coming as it did in a pool of grease.

And therein lies the problem with the full (English) breakfast - eat it more than twice a year and you are guaranteed to drop dead. And if the health fascists got their way, that would be changed so that even thinking about eating it would be terminal. Because we will be healthy, even if it kills us.

Anyway, tangents aside, on Saturday I made my first foray into the "Kick Start Breakfasts" chapter of Jamie's book, the first entry for which is "A Healthier Full Monty". Huzzah!

So, last week in Tesco I purchased the requisite things: Some best quality sausages, "Healthy Living" bacon (where they take the bacon, remove all the unpleasant bits around the sides, and call the remains healthy. Not being keen on the unpleasant bits, I call it "a good idea"), haggis (not listed in the book, but essential given my location), some eggs (of food nemesis fame), tomatoes, mushrooms. I already had the beans (though I absolutely reject his cravy "low salt beans" suggestion) and the bread.

And, as it turns out, the trick for making a healthier full monty is... grill it instead of fry it. Gosh, I wouldn't have thought of that. Though there is one thing I wouldn't have thought of, which was to bisect the sausage so it would cook faster and shed more fat.

So, anyway, I put together the full monty, including poaching the egg. Then I ate the full monty, noting that the egg remained unmistakably the weak link in the whole.

How good was that? So good.

The only slight glitch is that it took about twenty minutes to prepare, and longer to wash up (plus some time to actually eat). While I normally take a grand total of eight minutes for breakfast, where I make cereal. (How does one "make cereal"? One puts the box next to the milk. Obviously.)

In answer to the usual questions: yes, I will have it again, and not just because I split the packets of bacon, sausages and haggis four ways, and yes, that's 1-0 to Jamie in this chapter also. However, since this chapter features dread eggs quite heavily, I suspect he might not triumph so easily this time.

I don't know when the next experimental cookery Saturday will be. Nor indeed do I recall what it will be, and I don't have the book to hand. I'm sure it will be thrilling.