breakfast blogger

I finally finished digesting all the holiday food I’ve eaten over the last 2 weeks, and now have this to report:

I was in Toronto for New Year’s eve and had a lovely Hannukah brunch at the home of my new ladyfriend’s sister, along with her husband, very cute son, her father and his wife.
They served us one of the more imaginative Benedicts that I have ever eaten:

Here are two poached eggs with lox served on latkes, topped with a hollandaise.

I almost forgot to mention the raw cranberry slices - nice touch!

Here is a better view of the whole table, which included several cheeses, nuts, a lox platter, more bread, danish, and a fantastic fruit plate sprinkled with pomegranite seeds - a perfect holiday touch!

. . . and of course, the money shot:

My latke recipe (with tutorial) will be posted here very soon…

I haven’t even had time to post the remainder of my Turkish (and one British) breakfasts - which you can find a complete blog of at spankyhorowitz.shutterfly.com but I promise to as soon as I get back from yet another gastronomic adventure.

I am now deep in the heart of Barbecue Country. In Canada - people think “grilling” is Barbecue -.

I assure you it is not.

Paulie and I are driving a car from Montreal to Florida, and as luck would have it, we will have to drive through 3 very important barbecue ‘zones’. There exist a few different styles of Barbecue; all involve cooking the meat - usually pork shoulder - over wood coals for many, many hours:

Virginia has a tomato-based sauce known to most of the world as “barbecue sauce”. We sampled this at The Smokey Pig, in Ashland, Virginia.
North Carolina employs a vinegar ‘n’ pepper sauce that is not really a sauce, but wets the meat to perfect moisture levels. We enjoyed this in the Barbecue capitol of the world, or the county, or wherever ….- in Lexington, NC, at Smiley’s Barbecue - the only place opened on Sundays. Whew!

South Carolina uses a mustard-based sauce . . . which we will be trying today.
I have compiled a list of the best twenty or so barbecue smokehouses in the state. Paulie and I will need this many as some are now closed, and many have switched to using gas instead of wood - and I refuse to support these establishmenst, as they are contributing to the decay and possible extinction of what is truly one of the only authentically original “American” cuisines.

We are in Southern North Carolina, near Charlotte, and will cross into South Carolina to begin our search in a few minutes, after Paulie finishes eating his BREAKFAST - which is what you will get to0 see here.

Hampton Inn breakfast . . .MMMMmmm…..
Here is the hotel:

Here is the interesting part of thebreakfast buffet:

which is some weird breakfast pockets that you must microwave yourself:

Paulie had this one: filled with egg and sausage and cheese:

I decided, wisely, to save my gastronomic real estate for the Q, as I plan to sample the wares of at least 3 South Carolina Barbecue joints. I had a yogurt:

Stay tuned. . . and if Peabody allows, perhaps you will get to see my Barbecue adventures right here. . .

Peabody and I decided to have a breakfast together this past weekend, not only to break bread together, but to discuss the direction of the blog. As for a location, we compromised: Peabody drove 2 hours to Montreal, and I walked about 50 yards. Az stood us up.

We ate at Senzala, a place that I no longer frequent, seeing as I live very close to it, and I feel that the quality has suffered over the last 5 or 6 years. Here is Senzala, a Brazilian-style resto owned by my friend Andy:

Peabody and I both ordered the Tropicana - avocado. This is a feast for the palate - the mingling of flavors and textures is perfect for a lazy Sunday brunch. Two poached eggs are cradled in the hollow section of 2 avocado halves, and then covered in tomato sauce and cheese, and then set under the broiler until the cheese is melted. Very tasty. This used to be called the ele ou ela, when I used to order it many years ago.

My new girlfriend had the Tropicana - mango, equally as good.
Peabody’s girlfriend had the Saumontine - poached eggs and smoked salmon set in a bagel finished with a similar treatment as the Tropicana.

Here is what the Tropicana looked like as it arrived:

Most breakfasts are accompanied by a skewer of grilled fruit, fresh fruit, home fries, and a choice of breakfast meat (I chose sausage). Since I last ate here, the home fries have replaced a hash brown, which was probably a frozen pre-fab product - but still tasty as hell. The new home fries were unremarkable. Also missing were some plantains, which have possibly been removed from the menu. Too bad.

Here is a shot of my brunch after several bites, showing the avocado:

and here is the money shot:

I loved this breakfast, but I do have a complaint - the same complaint that I had several years back : The basket of toast is brought several minutes before the meal, unbuttered. By the time your meal arrives, you have cold, dry toast. This is an error easily corrected, and hopefully it will be.

Still, Senzala is a great place for brunch.

I am finally back from a few weeks in
Amsterdam, London, and Turkey.

I was here:
Notice the lack of snow.

. . .and have returned to this:

In Turkey, breakfasts are healthy.
They are also repititious - they seem exotic at first, but involve no variety and you get bored of it after a few mornings - saving room for the vast amounts of different lunch foods available - which you will not find here as our friendly fascist breakfast-blogmaster has made a stand against all things non-breakfast.

So, here is what they serve for breakfast in Turkey:
Tomatoes, cucumbers, a cheese that looks like feta but has very little salt (ie.taste), olives, bread, and a few other odds and ends.
This Istanbul hotel brekkie included some rose-petal jam. . .very tasty.

And to justify my thread title - here is a pic of some turkeys, in turkey!!

I am in Amsterdam working my ass off, and haven’t had anything you could call breakfast since the weird box-breakfast (which I will post once I find an internet place that allows USB/PC sex) that KLM gave me on the way here.
I cannot wait until next week -Turkey - I will have some long, leisurely, memorable breakfast over there.

Until then. . .