FRY DAY THOUGHTS

A proper fried breakfast is a thing of beauty and should reflect the following guidelines:

• The essential key components are:
• Smoked bacon (2 varieties can be used, but one is fine)
• Sausages (more than one type may be used)
• Chipolatas (optional)
• Mushrooms, fresh, fried
• Tomatoes, fresh, fried
• Tomatoes, tinned (optional)
• Baked beans (Heinz)
• Black pudding (Bury)
• Fried white sliced bread
• Eggs (3) fried or poached, always presented atop the fried bread
• Hash browns (optional)
• Above to be served with toast and butter. Frank Cooper's vintage Oxford marmalade may be added.
• Acceptable beverages are mugs of tea or coffee.
• Orange juice may be served.
• The only condiments acceptable are salt, pepper (but never on eggs), Heinz Tomato Ketchup and HP Sauce. No others. Barbecue sauce, no. Chili sauce, no. Thousand Island Sauce, Mint Sauce or any other sauce? Don't be silly.
• Mustard? Only for those above the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Even then, sparingly. And English only. And only applied to sausages.
• Sauces should be in small pools at the edge of the plate. never in scrolls or flamboyant nouveau cuisine style flourishes.
• The best fried bread result is achieved by cooking in bacon fat (or flitch if it can be obtained)
• White pudding is for perverts.
• Chorizo is for latin people.
• Fried potatoes should never be served. Otherwise it's a lunch, not a breakfast.
• A level of charring is desirable on fried fresh tomato halves.
• Less than three eggs is ungenerous.
• Bubble and Squeak, the cockney's friend, is welcome as an occasional visitor, but only in the manner as one would welcome a troglodyte to one's country house. In order to remind yourself why you don't want to be anything like them.
• Laverbread doesn't travel, so leave it in Wales.
• All other things you think "I'll just add that," - don't.
• The best place to cook everything except the tinned tomatoes, beans and eggs is in an Aga. Yes, even the toast - Aga toast is great. I'm no fan of Agas. Generally they are crap. But they do do the fry up doings better than anything else.
• Grilling bacon is like showering without soap. Or premature withdrawal. Or something.
• Both bacon and sausages should be bought at a local butcher's. Seriously, the quality difference between their products and the supermarkets is huge.
• The Oxford Union has debated whether mushrooms should be peeled before cooking. This House was undecided. They should however be large field mushrooms. Canned mushrooms are completely indigestible and are idiocy when fresh mushrooms are so easily and cheaply available.
• Eggs should be sourced from local farms. If poaching, a fresh egg does not need vinegar in the water. It will hold together well. If it doesn't, your supply source is wrong. It isn't fresh. Poaching eggs is actually preferable to frying. On a decent fry up it isn't as though you don't have enough fried stuff already on the plate. Yolks should be runny. Whites should be white, not snotty.
• Only salt should be put on egg. Pepper absolutely ruins the taste.
• I think that purchased hash browns are actually preferable to home made. They are quite hard things to make properly, and there is something delightfully bland yet satisfying about the frozen variety.
• These few guidelines seem to me to be perfectly easy to follow, and to result in breakfast happiness each and every time.