How does the saying go? ‘Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.’ Well, if you’re looking for the highest possible status of breakfast, then kedgeree is the dish for you. Bran flakes just don’t quite scratch the same itch. Kedgeree cannot be casual; it requires time, both for preparation and enjoying, and it makes breakfast an occasion. It came to our breakfast tables (or mahogany sideboards) in Victorian times, brought back to Britain by returning colonial officers. It was served in silver chafing dishes, set alongside steaming urns of porridge.
Kedgeree is a rice-based dish, flavoured with curried spices and cooked with smoked haddock, onions and boiled eggs. There are a host of other ingredients or accoutrements that can be served in or with it – peas, lime pickle, any herb you can think of – but these are the essentials. It started life as a dish of rice and lentils boiled together, called khichari by Ibn Battuta, the legendary Moroccan scholar and traveller, as far back as 1340.
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