Manolo’s Food Blog

John Updike writes in his final book Endpoint:

                                              Perhaps
we meet our heaven at the start and not
the end of life.

If Updike is remembered only for a single line, this should be the one.

Although Mr. Henry’s rejoinder may not achieve the eloquence of Updike’s iambic pentameter, here goes:

At breakfast you may eat the sweet
you left untouched the night before
and greet the day’s beginning with
the satisfaction knowing that
tomorrow you’ll have more.

The sweet in question this week is Mr. Henry’s favorite dessert from a platter of figs: prunes stewed in red wine with sugar and cinnamon. On yogurt it transports you to a heavenly realm.

The season is early for pit fruit – peaches, plums, nectarines. White peaches in the market aren’t bad but cannot approach the sublime aromas they exude in August.

Citrus in June has faded a bit from the high quality of springtime Indian River fruit, but pineapple remains a dependable choice. Its palate-cleansing acids encourage good digestion leaving the stomach full and the mouth clean.

Breakfast is the one moment of the day when something sweet is genuinely appropriate. Coffee’s bracing bitterness seeks balance in a delicate, sophisticated sweet. Instead of an icky, oily gut bomb like a doughnut or a Danish, reach for plum tart, apple pie, banana bread.

Even the morning mayhem brought to you by The New York Times cannot defeat the genuine thrill of such a breakfast. It’s a transcendent experience – life’s promise in each mouthful. Plus, you have the whole day ahead of you to walk off the calories.

Mr. Henry is worried about his country.

It is not enough that we change our party, we must change our pastry, as well, specifically, our breakfast pastry. It’s a scandal.

New York magazine’s cover story this week reveals the frightful selections locals here choose first thing in the morning. Be forewarned. This is not for the faint of heart.

Each picture portrait with breakfast description is a snapshot pinpointing personality and temperament. 60 interviews, 60 lives in brief, most bound for wreck and ruin.

Mind you, there is occasional testimony of oatmeal or fresh fruit. Quite a few sit down to a lumberjack breakfast of every high caloric ingestible known to man – eggs, bacon, grits (with cheese!), biscuits (with gravy!), and so on – not a regime designed for longevity unless you eat little else for the remainder of the day, but a regime that does sustain and nourish. Two men ate a pure breakfast of four hard-boiled eggs, one of whom followed that with two more eggs. What could be simpler?

The overwhelming majority eat sweets. Ick. Nothing good from sucrose comes.

How can we expect to lead the world on a breakfast of pop tarts and Venti? With these beginnings, by 11:00 a.m. even the soberest citizens are ready to dispense collateral damage willy-nilly.

The scariest of all must be the doughnut. Reason itself withers against a fried onslaught of fat and sugar.

Mr. Henry imagines guards at Guantanamo devouring jelly doughnuts and their sticky boxes, too. Wooh wooh wooh. Arggggggghhh! Off they go to force-feed the detainees.

The article revealed many mysteries. Two African-Americans ate turkey bacon. What could be the attraction? Is this a Black Muslim modification of the old-fashioned American standard?

Several people confessed to drinking alcohol in the morning, the very definition of alcohol dependence. Even alcohol, however, beats a breakfast of Coca-Cola.

Older people seem to have a better grasp of the importance of an appropriate breakfast. They don’t take their digestive functions for granted. The oldest man ate the breakfast best suited to gastro-intestinal happiness – an orange, cottage cheese and fig jam on wheat crackers, with English breakfast tea. This is more than a wise breakfast, it’s a tasty one. This man is clear-minded and well-balanced. Mr. Henry wants to vote for him.

Today Mr. Henry himself began with a small glass of fresh orange juice. While the coffee was steeping he ate half a banana and a large slice of red papaya. Because his noble hound Pepper does not permit a second cup of coffee before walkies, Mr. Henry’s oatmeal with raisins had to wait until after. (He adds a pinch of brown sugar and a splash of cream.)

After a second cup of coffee (french press) with whole milk, he is fully fed and fully caffeinated. Should he feel peckish at elevens, the best remedy will be an early lunch.

It is the year of change, indeed. Among Mr. Henry’s friends and relations long-established eating habits are giving way to new ones.

No meal is more culture-specific than breakfast. On your first trip to Japan, you won’t have trouble finding an acceptable lunch or dinner for anyone in the party. Breakfast is another story. Pickles, sashimi, raw quail egg on rice, tofu, miso soup, nori, daikon – none of these ever graced Mr. Henry’s grandmother’s table.

Mr. Henry’s German grandmother, who graduated from Iowa State University in 1912, rose early and started her day with a tablespoon of corn oil and a glass of hot water. She swore it prevented asthma, but Mr. Henry believes it contributed to regular evacuation, as well. She never missed her morning dose and she lived to be 97.

Mr. Henry’s Irish grandmother, the most beautiful girl in 1920’s New York, rose late and started with a strong cup of tea (and occasionally with a little hair of the dog, too). She departed this life at age 57.

Mother Henry is approaching her 77th birthday and charges around town like Hillary Clinton on energy drink. Recently she shared an unusual dietary secret. She starts her day with spinach. (Was that Popeye’s secret, too?)

While Father Henry squeezes the orange juice, Mother downs a few spoonfuls of cold spinach in between bites of hard-boiled egg. Later comes coffee and toast. She claims she needs to eat leafy greens every single day, and sometimes she gets so busy running around town that she doesn’t get an opportunity to sit down to a proper lunch. Dinner selections are variable and don’t always include leafy greens.

Over spring vacation Little Henry and posse shocked the grown-ups by starting their vacation morning with avocado on toast. (Mr. Henry blames the Food Network for these departures from normalcy.) Mr. Henry tried it too, but needed to add goat cheese and honey before it assumed the appearance of a morning repast.

Mrs. Henry has been making fruit smoothies with seaweed powder – morning green goop. She claims it will change your life. Consider yourself warned.

‘

Emboldened by freely wandering the antique byways of Rome, Little Henry’s friend Stinky launched an accusation that Mr. Henry will not permit to stand uncontested in this or any other forum:

“Mr. Henry talks a lot about cooking but never does any!”

Ha! Only weeks ago Mr. Henry prepared a tiramisu at home that even the skeptical Stinky admitted was a bona fide, authentic, and glorious tiramisu.

It wasn’t exactly cooking, mind you, because no heat was applied. But it greatly impressed the crowd. Here for his gentle reading public so long ignored because he has been re-arranging his life, his office, and his books, Mr. Henry offers up a recipe of sorts, or rather recipe guidelines, for la vera tiramisu di Signor Henry.

Don’t worry. The thing is failproof. You can fudge any proportion and it turns out just fine.

Mr. Henry’s Tiramisu

6 eggs
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
splash of scotch
1 large tub mascarpone (500g)
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate
1 package ladyfinger cookies (200g)

First brew some coffee quadruple strength (In deference to the children Mr. H. chose decaffeinated.) and let it cool to room temperature or colder. Grate some good chocolate like Scharffenberger, mixing half a bar of bittersweet with a modicum of unsweetened to intensify the flavor. Have close at hand, as well, a bottle of single malt scotch whiskey. (Mr. Henry believes this to be sound advice for any recipe.) For this recipe, Mr. Henry chose The Macallan.

Separate six eggs. Whip the whites until stiff. Cream the yokes together with a cup (or more) of confectioners’ sugar, beating until the color becomes pale. You raw-egg worry-worts at home, please relax. The sugar preserves the egg. In the fridge the concoction will stay perfectly fresh far longer than it will survive repeated servings to you and yours.

Finally to the creamed yokes whip in a splash of scotch, dark rum, or any other spirit appropriate for a coffee, chocolate, and mascarpone confection. This last touch brings a perfume to the dish that separates it from a quotidian custard.

With big gestures and a big rubber spatula, lightly fold in the mascarpone and then the egg whites. Ecco! Mascarpone custard cream. Now you build.

Slice the ladyfingers in half lengthwise if you like. (This is a decision more of style than of taste.) Spread half of them loosely in a deep dish pan. Using a pastry brush soak them – yes, soak them – with coffee. [A Mr. Henry Dictum: Italian desserts must be either soggy or hard as brick.] Cover with a layer of mascarpone custard cream. Then cover the cream thoroughly with half the grated chocolate. Repeat the procedure to create a second story. Chill until set, at least three hours.

Mr. Henry is reminded of an equally false accusation hurled his way by his diminutive and opinionated life-long consort, Mrs. Henry, namely, that whenever he gets an idea for a new dish he feels compelled to purchase a new kitchen utensil. This is falseness itself! Mr. Henry always makes do with whatever is at hand. (A recent purchase of a Le Creuset oval enameled gratin pan was NOT an indulgence. Someday soon she will thank him for it, and mean it sincerely.)

As an example of his resourcefulness, on the morning after returning late from JFK he prepared a fine breakfast of marmalade and crackers borrowed from several of Italy’s nicer hotel breakfast baskets and conveyed trans-Atlantic in Aunt Bev’s backpack. Although there are grocery stores within walking distance of his apartment, Mr. Henry prefers not to conduct his marketing at 3:30 a.m., an hour when he receives stares from street strays and riff-raffy youth.

He prefers the adoring glances he believes he got in Florence from American college students envious of his casual insouciance and his fluency in Italian. He did not actually witness these glances, mind you, being too polite to stare slack-jawed at breathtakingly beautiful young women. Mr. Henry, you see, has faith in the unseen.

Finding himself at Zabar’s late in the afternoon, his arms already laden with foodstuffs, with no time or energy left to forage further afield, Mr. Henry to his horror realized he was out of coffee. Since Mrs. Henry never touches the stuff and consequently has no appreciation of what a conundrum he was in, a cell-phone call for wifely assistance was not in order.

In his urban peregrinations, Mr. Henry regularly attempts to locate an Oren’s Daily Roast which, he maintains, has the best beans in town for an infusion method (french press) cup of coffee. Failing that, he buys wherever he finds something that looks reasonably roasted.

However, he never ever buys coffee at Zabar’s. You see – and it pains him to criticize a store so conveniently located and offering such good breads, cheeses, and smoked fish – Zabar’s burns the beans. They over-roast them until the coffee, no matter which variety, uniformly lacks the subtler aromas, becoming bitter ash. In this regard, Zabar’s resembles Starbucks and a host of other celebrated purveyors of coffee.

But then Starbucks is essentially a franchise for steamed milk. The coffee is secondary. If proof were needed for this, when coffee prices suddenly doubled some years ago, Starbuck’s did not raise their prices one whit. The cost of the coffee in a single espresso is eleven cents – and that is the cost after the roaster has imposed a quintuple mark-up.

Truth be told, Zabar’s has always been an establishment more concerned with price than with quality. This not meant to be a derogatory statement. They understand their market. As many failed restauranteurs have learned, Upper West Siders won’t pay.

At that very moment beside the coffee bags appeared a willowy blue-eyed Mexican boy straight out of “Y Tu Mama Tambien” who offered me a free sample of Jalima brand coffee from Mexico.

In a whisper I complained to him that I never buy coffee here because it is over-roasted. He nodded in conspiratorial assent and suggested I try Jalima H & A Gourmet bean grown in Veracruz. Medium ground and vacuum packed, the Gourmet is a marvelously rich brew with hints of citrus and chocolate, delicate and refined, perfect for the french press.

Furlagirl writes:
Mr (ha!) Henry, does not, though, quite address my question. His advice, if one wishes to maintain a svelte figure, is to make breakfast the largest meal of the day, but the breakfasts he outlines don’t seem that big to me, not compared with his lunches.

Eating a big breakfast is an ideal, a goal, a mental construct, a “road map” to a better tomorrow. As an evidentiary matter, the size of Mr. Henry’s breakfast does not necessarily conform to his published proscriptions and, consequently, is rarely his largest meal of the day. That is, like the mother crab telling her baby, “Don’t walk sideways, dear!” Mr. Henry does not always follow his own advice. Limiting dinnertime drinking to two glasses of wine, for example, is another noble ideal not always achieved. But without ideals, even failed ones, who are we?

Through this confession has he disappointed his devoted readers? Do they feel their trust misplaced, their loyalties betrayed?

Furlagirl quickly picked up on this contradiction, almost as though she were an investigative reporter who specializes in Middle Eastern and other insurmountable problems. Breakfast issues are not nearly as ticklish as those of the Arab-Israeli conflict, thankfully, yet they vex us nonetheless.

A “big” breakfast, therefore, can justly be described as “big” if it exceeds the breakfast an early-morning Henry might eat if left to his raw, unreflective self. First thing in the morning cooking in any normative sense is not an option, nor are surgical activities such as chopping, slicing, or shaving. The notion of cooking Blackstone Eggs, as delicious as Joan makes them sound, is quite unthinkable in the morning. Even breaking an egg with aplomb, much less poaching one, is beyond Mr. Henry’s capabilities.

Upon rising he stumbles into the kitchen and, following a well-rehearsed rote sequence, places the kettle on the fire, walks downstairs to retrieve the N.Y. Times, and sits in his favorite chair. At this moment Mr. Henry considers himself to have achieved a moral victory merely by maintaining his body in a sitting position. When the kettle begins to whistle, he rouses his leaden frame and proceeds to perform the one essential morning task: he makes the coffee.

A Mr. Henry dictum: Dinner is the vehicle for wine, breakfast the vehicle for coffee.

Coffee is not easy to prepare. Do not leave the preparation of coffee to minors, tea drinkers, aged relatives, or health nuts.

Coffee is among the world’s most potent aromatics. In the 13th century when the Arabs of south Arabia first introduced it to the Muslim world’s holy cities, coffee was declared to be an intoxicant and men were hanged for imbibing it. Its salutary effects on mood, however, make it a holy substance in Mr. Henry’s cupboard, the frankincense of his life. Without it, he descends immediately into despair – one of the seven deadlies – and gets a wicked headache, to boot. Once when he forswore the black potion for five days straight, a misguided attempt to boost fertility [don’t ask], his staff rose up and threatened to resign en masse unless he took a cup immediately. Acceding to the strikers’ demand was an enormous personal relief.

Although breakfast may not be the day’s largest meal, it remains a very important moment, the chance either to begin the day profitably or begin it insalubriously. Its importance, therefore, may loom larger than its physical scale.

We are each creatures of routine, and no routines are as invariable as morning ones. Mr. Henry begins his day slowly and rises to a crescendo sometime in the late evening. He once broke up with a perfectly nice woman after the first overnight date because she was so peppy and cheerful in the morning. Although he feels pangs of guilt about it and wishes her nothing but happiness, in the end he knows it was all for the best.

Since Mr. Henry’s confessional impulses seem to have taken hold, he should by rights declare that lately he has been breakfasting on the little Henry’s leftover birthday cake, a soggy-bottomed Chilean dulce de leche affair covered in whipped cream (lovingly crafted by Tia Mirta), an altogether inspired accompaniment to a thick cup of Sumatra.

Another Mr. Henry Dictum: True Latin countries are defined by a fondness for desserts with soggy bottoms, the zuppa inglese being a prime example.

France only pretends to be Latin so they can steal Italian style and Spanish wit. In truth the French are Romanized Germanic tribes, which explains why their trains run on time. But is there a people who know better how to live? Is it any wonder that so few French emigrated to the New World?

Dear Mr Henry

Here in England the hearty breakfast is the traditional English fry up of bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding, baked beans, tomatoes, toast. I can’t help feeling that this isn’t a good way to start the day. My own breakfast is likely to be oatmeal or muesli with milk, fruit, yogurt. But if you count up the calories that’s not such a big breakfast. So what is it you have in mind when you talk about the big breakfast. Could you post some examples?

Linda Grant

Mr. Henry knows this letter comes from a genuinely British person because here in the States we employ a period after “Mr.”, a dead give-away. (In addition to being foodies, Mr. Henry’s readers are punctuation fussbudgets and style sticklers.) Mention of muesli, as well, what we here call granola is a clear clue of her European origin. Of course both names by origin are trademarks for oatmeal mixed with nuts, raisins, brown sugar, and the like. Once we all began eating our morning porridge cold, however, the old name became inappropriate. ‘Cold gruel’ is an apt coinage, perhaps, but surely one unacceptable to the marketing department.

The traditional English breakfast fry-up where even the toast is fried! The morning cholesterol stun! Yes, that is the way towards empire, my son, the appropriate beginning for a traditional English day out hiking through the Hindu Kush or dog-sledding across the Antarctic, excursions which require sensible breakfasts and sensible shoes. Once in a while the hearty fry-up does hit the spot, Mr. Henry admits, but perhaps so many calories with such a high proportion of fat in one sitting is a jolt best endured at midday, the equivalent of a heart resuscitation by electric shock. [Place metal discs on either side of the chest, shout “CLEAR!” and hit the button.]

I quite agree with your choices of morning repast, Ms. Grant, and you serve as a paragon of English practicality. Mr. Henry himself always takes fruit in the morning, a banana at first, the gentlest of fruit, and then at the end of the meal something pulpy like melon, berries, or the pitted fruits – most delicious of all foods.

Rolled oats, and in this Mr. Henry parts with tradition rather dramatically, he eats raw, sometimes with plain yogurt and sometimes without. The crunch is very satisfying, the oats provide fodder for intestinal rumination, and the fiber encourages digestion while protecting against shocks delivered by the New York Times.

In the late 18th century, the rise of wage labor meant the English working man took his lunch at the job site, a lunch that normally consisted of a slice of cheese and bread with a cup of tea. The hot sugared drink took the place of a proper home-cooked meal and became one of the great adaptations of the modern world, a necessary element in the rise of industrialization. The traditional English fry-up is, Mr. Henry believes, a hold-over from a gentleman’s breakfast, not a working man’s breakfast, and reflects an abundance of expensive victuals. In our world when the cost of basic foodstuffs has become an expenditure smaller than the entertainment budget, eating bacon and eggs and black pudding, etc., at a single sitting is distinctly unwise.

When Mr. Henry speaks of a “big” breakfast, by the way, he does not mean the traditional morning offering at an NFL training camp. But he does mean something larger than the much vaunted Mediterranean-diet breakfast of an espresso and a croissant or some such white flour pastry masquerading as healthy food, a breakfast best suited to the person who rises at 11:00 a.m.

Mr. Henry treats his alimentary canal with care. In his youth he had an iron stomach. Raised on TV-dinners, bologna & cheese sandwiches, and hamburgers, he could digest nearly anything. His favorite mid-morning snack from the school canteen (a holdover name from its military school days) was a Coke, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and a bag of Cheetos. He shudders to recall it, but since his adolescent stomach would not accept any breakfast whatsoever, the snack became young Henry’s breakfast long overdue. That triple-cocktail was the highest caloric mix available at the canteen.

But in 1975 a banana milkshake at the Hippie Café in Marrakech sent him crawling to his bed for two weeks, after which he could never again blithely graze the groaning board.

The intestines may have suffered but Mr. Henry’s character only strengthened. He began to establish routines, the signature of adulthood. And in life there are no more firmly rooted routines than those of breakfast.

The Japanese, for example, cannot begin the day without pickled vegetables, a curious habit Mr. Henry quickly picked up during his sojourns in Kyoto. Sashimi first thing in the morning was a habit more difficult to establish, however, but miso soup with rice (and fishy sprinkles), pickles, and a bit of egg went down nicely. Most unfortunately for western travelers, however, fruit in Japan is prohibitively expensive. Mr. Henry does not understand how the Japanese, an admirably practical island people like the British, permit themselves to remain victims of their greedy, protectionist farmers. He ruminates about this.