World's best hangover brekkie

Once upon a time, back in the days when it wasn't really Saturday unless it started with a hangover, Mikko and Georgi hauled their suffering bodies onto a flight to Canberra. We were flying with the matriarch and patriarch of 'Clan Colquhoun', and John and Jude were frankly horrified by our seediness. (Can't think why. Specially when I'm sure it was their wine the night before...)

Everything changed when we found the delightful 'Cafe Essen' in Civic, which served sweetcorn fritters with bacon and maple syrup. Sounds disgusting, you might think. I did. But the more I thought about it the better it sounded, and by the time I'd kept down a large glass of 'fat Coke' I was ready to try it.

To this day, it's the world's best brekkie for a hangover. Or any other Saturday, come to that. For years I despaired of ever being able to replicate it, until last year I found a recipe in a book in the Oxford library. And it works!

Far more than just my drinking habits have changed since those days, but today, apropos of nothing, I made the 'worlds best hangover brekkie' again, It was magnificent.
It put me in mind of hundreds of weekend breakfasts in Seymour and Abbotsford, Luxembourg, Finland, England and Austria, France and Belgium. I don't know anyone who does breakfast with as much aplomb as the Mikko did.

From sprawled on the floor devouring the weekend papers, to bottomless coffees with eggs benedict in some groovy cafe in Fitzroy, Collingwood or South Melbourne, breakfast was a Mikko morning ritual, an institution. Fry ups after a feast. Pancakes.

And that most memorable one of all, where he asked what I wanted for my birthday brekkie at his parents' house. Smoked salmon with scrambled eggs, please, I replied. My morning started with a glass of champagne, and an invitation to laze around under the doona until brekkie was ready.

Brekkie took quite some time.

After about an hour, a slightly flustered Mikko came up the stairs, apologising profusely cos he'd never actually made 'scrumbled' eggs before and he hadn't a clue where to start and did 'this' look vaguely right.

They were perfect, as was the salmon, the other glass of champagne, and our long wintry walk around the old Luxembourg Ville. Smoked Salmon and scrambled eggs is still my favourite brekkie for birthdays - although only once has the delivery ever even come close to that magical day when I turned 28.