Mothers Day breakfast

May 10, 2008

in Home cooking

We had Jac’s mum Pattycakes over for an early Mothers Day breakfast on the 4th of May.

We planned three courses – fruit to start, followed by a fry-up and then waffles to finish.

While Jac cooked mushrooms and chipolatas for the fry-up course, I got to work assembling the fruit platter. There’s something really pleasurable about cutting and arranging fruit while your nostrils fill with the tantalising smells of frying garlic and butter and you listen to the sound of little porky sausages sizzling and whistling as they cook in the pan.

Fruit platter

On the platter, I placed oranges, watermelon, papaya (also known as pawpaw), kiwifruit, banana, prunes and dried apricots. The papaya could’ve been a little riper but was still quite sweet. I de-pithed the orange and removed the watermelon rind and the papaya skin. When it comes to fruit I am anti-seeds/pips/stones – so I’d purchased pitted prunes, seedless watermelon, de-seeded papaya and navel oranges.

Fruit platter closer

For the fry-up course, we’d planned to do a mini fry-up, with small items (hence “mini”) – fried quail eggs, cherry tomatoes, button mushrooms, chipolatas, and some sort of small toast. I thought it would be fun and cute and also ensure that we’d have plenty of room for the waffle course. But then we couldn’t find any quail eggs, and the smallest eggs we could find were large ones – according to the egg size chart on the Golden Eggs carton, they’re supposed to come in medium, large, extra large and jumbo, but there weren’t any medium eggs to be found in any of the shops we looked. Oh well. It worked out very well in the end.

We bought pane di casa rolls from Baker’s Delight (the small pane di casa bread rolls, as opposed to a full-sized loaf), which Jac sliced into chunks and toasted under the grill. I love this bread lightly toasted and then smeared with butter.

Toasted pane di casa

As Jac and her mum tucked in, I kept taking photos. My plate’s the one in the foreground. Jac is sitting to my right, her mum on my left. You may notice Jac’s egg is over easy, while her mum’s is like mine, with a soft yolk.

Everyone eats... accept TFP

So, on my plate – grilled cherry tomatoes, which were really juicy and sweet. I could’ve eaten a whole mountain of these. As usual, Jac served me the panfried garlic cloves along with the mushrooms. The pork chipolatas were meaty and delicious. Jac ate hers with chilli sauce while I ate mine with smokey barbecue sauce. I had two pieces of toast – one with butter, and the other with butter and cranberry with blueberry preserve. I guess the fry-up wasn’t quite so mini after all! I washed it all down with a glass or two of 100% orange juice.

Fry-up

Jac fried the eggs in metal rings to contain their shape, so they’d seem more mini than they actually were. I love how eggs fried in rings end up so nice and round and thick. The toasted pane di casa was perfect for mopping up the gooey egg yolk and the soft, curdy bits of egg white.

Fried egg close-up

After we cleared the fry-up plates away, I made the hot drinks and got to work with the waffle maker. I’d woken up early that morning and made the waffle batter ahead of time, so all I had to do was cook the waffles. Our waffle maker is a Breville Waffle Creations. It works well enough, but I’d like a proper waffle iron, which makes waffles with really deep squares that I can fill up with maple syrup. I’d like a nice round waffle, not this new-fangled heart-shape. Just doesn’t seem like a real waffle this way. We ate our “waffles” with lashings of thickened cream and maple syrup (we buy Camp maple syrup).

Waffles with maple syrup and cream

If anyone’s interested, I got the waffle recipe from here. It made about nine of the waffles like the one pictured in the photo above. I liked the flavour of the waffles – not too sweet on their own (only one tablespoon of sugar in the batter), which was perfect – plenty of sweetness was added via the maple syrup, after all. The recipe that came with our waffle maker is quite similar, but uses butter or margarine instead of vegetable oil, and includes three tablespoons of sugar instead of one. We ate four waffles between the three of us, and the other five I left to cool and then placed in single serve freezer bags for later.

A Happy Mothers Day to my readers and friends who are mums, if you’re into the whole Mothers Day thing. In case you’re wondering why I haven’t done anything for my mum for Mothers Day, we don’t celebrate Mothers Day in my family. My mum’s not into it at all. Ditto my dad and Fathers Day.

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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }

1 justonemorebite May 10, 2008 at 7:11 pm

Yummmm yummm stop it …. I am now beginnimg to crave eggs with a softy softy yolk for 2moro’s brekkie . .. . I love eggs and those look soo good that Jac made .. you are a lucky lady :-) . . . . wish I was so lucky :-(

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2 M.M. May 11, 2008 at 5:54 am

Wow this looks so amazingly delicious! I love having a morning full of nice, cooking smells. Mmm. Especially frying garlic. The miniature food idea is so cute, hehe. Too bad about the quail eggs! Oddly enough I’ve only seen quail eggs sold in Asian grocery stores, though I am from the US so it might just be like that here.
And a happy Mothers’ Day to you, Jac, and Jac’s mom :)

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3 dea May 11, 2008 at 2:21 pm

the entire spread looks really nice! i consume st. dalfour’s jams too…they are very nice on hot buttered toast! i especially love the strawberry, four fruits and cranberry/blueberry that you featured.

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4 Denisse May 11, 2008 at 10:15 pm

I love the concept of a “mini” mother’s day brunch. I’m going to try that the next time we host brunch. I am a firm believer that if the portions are mini…I can eat as much as I want without any worries because they’re mini…right?!? Small food = small amount of calories ;-)

Besides it’s just too cute! Think of the possibilities…mini chocolate chip muffins. Mini pancakes. OK, I’m making myself hungry.

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5 blur ting May 12, 2008 at 11:11 am

The food looks so good. I should have trained my kids to do something special like this for me on Mother’s Day.

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6 daphne May 12, 2008 at 4:41 pm

What a great hearty breakfast! Jac’s mum must be pleased. =)

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7 The food pornographer May 13, 2008 at 5:49 am

justonemorebite,
Yep. I feel grateful every day. :)

M.M.,
They sell quail eggs in Asian supermarkets over here too. Except that on this occasion, all the Asian supermarkets we went to were all out.

dea,
My favourite jam is always strawberry, but I liked this cranberry/blueberry one too – not too sweet but still yummy.

Denisse,
Mmmm, mini pancakes and mini muffins sound great!

blur ting,
Heh. It’s not too late to commence training! :-P

daphne,
I think she enjoyed herself. We like to spoil our guests, whatever the occasion, but a special effort is called for, when a mum is involved.

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8 Bryan May 14, 2008 at 4:27 am

MINI??? c’mon – I think the heaping pile of cherry tomatoes was the only “mini” thing on your plate TFP… Beautiful fruit tray btw… I love to cut fresh fruits and veggies…

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9 Biodun May 17, 2008 at 5:51 pm

The whole table looks amazing… I love the flavour of the waffles. I gonna find time and let my son learn few things in here. This is great!

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10 The food pornographer May 19, 2008 at 7:25 pm

Bryan,
Hahaha. I did say that the fry-up wasn’t quite so mini after all! :-P

Biodun,
I love the weekends when we have the time to cook up and enjoy a magnificent breakfast!

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11 almondkey June 9, 2008 at 9:14 am

Hi, what do the rings you used to cook the eggs look like? I’d like to get one so I can make wonderful thick eggs too :)

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