Ten Late Breakfasts

This selection of recipes, celebrating the institution of breakfast, is part of the "Ten Menus Cookery Series" in which different cookery writers express their individual approach to entertaining. Each volume is illustrated and is designed to be practical and easy to use with menus which have been carefully planned and presented. This volume includes a collection of ideas for both intimate and formal occasions. Menus include "a romantic breakfast for two" with oeufs a l'amour, heart-shaped pastries and bucks fizz, or "a birthday bender", with caviar and sour cream canapes and a birthday cake with hazelnut and kirsch. Recipes for breads and preserves and alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic drinks are included to complete the late breakfast menu. Alexandra Carlier is author of "The Dinner Party Book" and "The Working Gourmet" and has contributed to Time-Life Books "Good Cooks" series and the Marshall Cavendish partwork "Robert Carrier's Kitchen".

Large late-morning breakfasts are big business, as anyone who has sampled a hotel's Sunday brunch can attest. Here food writer Carlier makes her own suggestions for brunch menus and recipes, reproducing the prodigious late breakfasts served in Scotland, Cornwall, Alsace and New Orleans, at country estates and in city apartments. But Carlier's breakfast will have to be served late--in some cases, very late--if cooks follow her urgings. Most dishes require several hours or more to prepare; some recipes, such as beef tenderloin en brioche, require cooks to stay up the night before. And menus offer vast amounts of food. The New Orleans brunch includes juice, cocktails, fresh fruit, eggs Benedict, New Orleans chicken (with sauteed bananas, creamed corn and rice cooked with red peppers), breads and rolls, blini and pecan pie. The best recipes are sophisticated: a roasted hazelnut yogurt to accompany fresh granola and an Alsatian bread made with dried fruits. This would be the ideal cookbook to take on a long weekend holiday with several hard-working gourmands in attendance--or plenty of kitchen help on hand. Illustrated.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.