[Sca-cooks] Irish breakfast

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 27, 2006, at 11:58 PM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Cailte mentioned about the B&B she visited in Ireland and the  
> proprietress:
> >>>
> tho she never quite understood our preference for coffee,
> toast and jam to the full irish breakfast we could have
> had every a.m.
> <<<
>
> So, what does a full/traditional Irish breakfast consist of?

The classical Irish breakfast is usually a variation on the morning  
version of the fry, fry-up, or in the US, mixed grill. As the first  
two names state, and the third sorta implies, various ingredients are  
thrown into a large skillet to cook. These can include any  
combination, in descending order of frequency/likelihood, of things  
like:

~Eggs (especially necessary if this is a breakfast fry)
~Bacon (ditto -- generally back or loin bacon anywhere except the US)
~Sausages, such as bangers or the more standard peppery breakfast  
sausage
~Chunks of cooked black pudding
~Chunks of cooked white pudding
~Chips, home fries or hash browns (often the latter is run through a  
grater, like a potato latke without the egg or matzoh)
~Toast (generally white "batch" bread, sometimes brown bread, and  
never, in my experience, soda bread
~Fried tomato slices
~liver slices (lamb, calf, or beef, normally, but sometimes pork)
~chops, normally lamb, occasionally pork
~fried or broiled mushroom caps, ideally field mushrooms, which are  
fairly similar to portobellos
~kidney (generally lamb)

The liver, chops, mushrooms and kidneys are more evening fry items,  
but do occasionally turn up at breakfast, especially on Sundays. The  
egg seems to be included morning and night. I've heard rumors of  
canned baked beans showing up, even the dreaded curry-flavored beans,  
but I have never actually seen this.

Oh, and sometimes the bread is fried in the pan, and not toasted.

Now you can see the irony built into Harry Potter's bloated Aunt  
[Marge?] saying she doesn't have time to cook anything but a fry-up...

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04