I wondered where Nigella was.........................
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
If you're planning to watch the royal wedding live on Friday, be prepared to wake up early. Thanks the time difference, the televised ceremony will start at 6:00 a.m. on the East Coast and 3:00 a.m. on the West Coast. If you have a hard time thinking about food at such an uncivilized hour, food writer Nigella Lawson is here to offer some wedding-worthy breakfast suggestions.
Weddings can be stressful, so if you need to take the edge off, start the day with a drink. "I suggest what I call a Fragonard but I'm going to re-name it, a 'Princess.'" Lawson tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "Some fizzy wine - champagne if you want to really give it everything you've got - with a strawberry puree." Just split some fresh strawberries in a food processor or blender, she instructs. "Having fruit early in the morning is a fairly healthy thing," she adds ... so what if it's floating in alcohol?
If it's 3:00 a.m. on the West Coast and you really need something to get you out of bed, Lawson recommends an iced coffee, with a kick: One shot of coffee liqueur, and a quarter of a cup of espresso or very strong, dark coffee. "I put it in a blender with some ice," Lawson says, but "if you're desperate don't bother for the icing stage." Drink it like a shot, or just add ice and make it an Americano.
Lis Parsons/Hyperion
Recipe: Buttermilk Scones and Jumbleberry Jam
Francesca Yorke/Hyperion
Recipe: Asian-Spiced Kedgeree
Once you've had a drink or two in honor of the royal nuptials, it's time to start thinking about breakfast. Lawson, who is from London, says she "going to upset a lot of English people" by recommending scones - normally associated with tea time. "Our scones aren't what you call scones in America," she explains. "Ours are round, not triangular. In fact, what the English call scones are really what you would call biscuits."
Bake the scones the night before and then quickly heat them up in the morning. Lawson recommends enjoying them with jam (you can find her recipe for Buttermilk Scones, Jumbleberry Jam below) but you can also go the savory route with hardboiled egg chopped up with a bit of parsley.
If you want to go truly traditional - "the sort of breakfast dish that would have been served at about the time of The King's Speech" - then go for Kedgeree. It's a fish dish of Indian origin. Lawson uses salmon - "a beautiful thing to have at breakfast" - and poaches it with lime leaves (Lawson's full Kedgeree recipe is below). She cooks the rice with coriander, cumin and tumeric. Then she flakes in the poached salmon, some cilantro, and quartered hardboiled eggs.
With traditional British breakfast in hand, wedding watchers in the U.S. can settle in to watch William and Kate tie the knot. But are Americans embracing this latest royal union with more gusto than the British? Lawson doesn't buy it. "I think that everyone is giving a show of enormous bored nonchalance and indifference in this country," Lawson says. "However, I think everyone's going to watch it."
Lawson's not sure she'll watch the wedding in full, "but I want to see the dress," she says. "I can't make myself feel it's a pivotal experience in my life, but I think it would be an affectation to ignore it."
My thanks to
.....................