Bookmark us

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

breakfast

Ireland: Ulster Fry (March 10, 2008)

Cousin to the Irish breakfast or "full Irish", the Ulster Fry is possibly the single dish most closely associated with Northern Ireland.

There are, however, some vital differences between the Fry and the Full Irish. Officially, the Fry does not contain anything that can't be fried in bacon fat. This means that ingredients that have sneaked in from other regional Irish and British fry-ups (such as baked beans) don't belong in the Fry.

The Ulster Fry is available all over the North both for breakfast and (in cafes and casual restaurants) as a lunch and dinner dish. It's as close as this island comes to the "all-day breakfast" concept. The Fry is meant to be hearty and substantial, and any attempt to render it in low-calorie form is destined to fail, as the ingredients (except for the potato farl and soda farl) are already too high-cholesterol for grilling them to make much of a difference if you're going to be eating them all at once. The key to keeping an Ulster Fry from doing long-term harm to your cardiac health or your waistline is simply not to eat it every day, or maybe even every week. But if you're going to make it, make it the old-fashioned way.

The is a basic roster of ingredients without which an Ulster Fry isn't genuine. They are:

  • Streaky bacon / bacon rashers

  • Sausages (typically the kind referred to in these islands as the "chipolata")
  • Black pudding (an Irish sausage containing blood, a grain such as oats or barley, and various spices)
  • Eggs
  • Potato farl (a potato-based griddle bread, rolled out into a circle and cut into quarters, then baked)
  • Soda farl (soda bread baked on the griddle, also in quarters: "farl" is an old word for quarter)

Other ingredients that sometimes get involved, either as a garnish or as elements of other regional breakfasts that have slithered into the equation from the outside, are white pudding (a sausage like black pudding but without the blood), tomatoes, mushrooms, and fried bread.

Click "read more" for a how-to guide and a note on how to find the necessary raw materials.

Belgium -- Belgian Waffles

In this world of foods that people label as coming from one place when they actually come from somewhere else (like French fries) and dishes that people think everyone in a country eats when that's not the case at all (like corned beef and cabbage), it's a relief to find one food that actually comes from the country it's named after, and is really popular there as well. Into this class falls that shining example of sugary goodness, the Belgian waffle -- known to French-speakers on its home turf as the gaufre or gauffre, and to Flemish- / Vlaamse-speakers as the wafel, waffel or suikerwaffel.

This is where things get complicated, though, as it turns out there isn't just one kind of Belgian waffle. There are at least two main varieties -- possibly more, depending on who you talk to -- and a lot of minor regional variations.

But before getting into details about the recipes, it has to be said that in their native Belgium, waffles aren't eaten all that much as a breakfast dish -- though naturally tourists ask for them at breakfast, and get them. And though they appear as a dessert dish, again, there are lots of other desserts that are as popular among Belgians.

Where the waffle really shines in Belgium is as a casual snack food -- something you buy from a bakery or street stand, and eat hot and out of hand. (There is so much of this that there are lots of places, especially in the big cities, where you'll see signs like the one on the left, begging people not to bring waffles into shops or stand around eating them out in front and blocking the view in or out of the windows.)

The waffle that most North Americans would think of as a Belgian waffle is known in Belgium as gaufre de Bruxelles, "the Brussels waffle". General Belgian affection for it is sufficiently great that this waffle was chosen as one of the national "birthday cakes" for the European Union's fiftieth birthday celebrations.

The Brussels waffle is based on a batter raised with yeast -- as opposed to most North American waffle or pancake batters, which are raised with baking powder.


Gaufre de Bruxelles: Brussels-style waffle

This is where many North American attempts at the Brussels/Belgian waffle fall down: the yeast raising changes the chemistry of the batter, producing a tenderer crumb in the finished waffle than a baking-powder raising can. The yeast and the beaten egg whites which are folded into the batter work together to produce a light crisp waffle. The Brussels waffle is rectangular and usually about an inch thick, with fairly deep "dimples". When you buy it on the street or in a shop in Belgium, it usually comes dusted with a little confectioners' sugar / icing sugar, and maybe spread with chocolate or thick whipped cream. But you can also get it piled high with fruit and other goodies.

The other main kind of waffle is the Liège waffle, named after that city. It's oblong, more or less oval-shaped, a thinner and smaller waffle than the Brussels waffle. But it's also more substantial, and has a significant crunch due to the small nuggets of parelsuiker or "pearl sugar" that are added to the batter just before baking. These bits of sugar melt when being baked on the waffle iron and caramelize, producing a sugary crust like what's found on top of a creme brulée.


Gauffres de Liège | Liège-style waffles

(Pearl sugar is somewhat specialized. Some stores that specialize in cakemaking and other confectionery carry it, and there are some online sources, this one for example, and this one. If you can't get your hands on it, you can fake the pearl-sugar effect passably well by procuring "coffee sugar" -- the brown kind that comes in large granules -- pounding it well in a cloth with a wooden meat-tenderizing mallet, and sprinkling the crystals into the batter when directed in the recipe below.)

Click on "Read more" to see the recipes. (Francophones: see also this excellent page of minor regional waffle varieties such as the gaufre de Flamande, gaufre de Herve, gaufre de Verviers, gaufre de Perron, etc.)

Syndicate content

Live European recipe advice