Breakfast Around the World

I’ve been dealing with an extreme bout of total unmotivation this week so I opted out of thought for this post. Instead, I posed the question to my Twitter buddies what they were interested in knowing about food. DazzlinDonna responded with the idea to look at what cultures around the world do for breakfast.

I was actually a bit surprised at the answer, but according to Wikipedia every major culture appears to use breakfast as a chance to load up on carbohydrates: rolls, pastries, noodles, and rice are common in just about every culture. In India, they eat Idli, a savory lentil cake. In Pakistan, they eat Naan. Vietnam eats noodles. In Western cultures, there are biscuits, toast, pancakes, and oatmeal.

This does make sense. In many cultures, the gap between breakfast and the next meal can be up to 12 hours. Eating a heavy breakfast will give the eater the best chance to remain full throughout the day.

During my reading, there was one dish, though, that really caught my eye: htamin kyaw, a Myanmaran rice/split pea dish.

I couldn’t find was a recipe for it, but I did learn that this is dish made from day old rice, yellow peas, and onions with cumin and tumeric for flavoring.

This is my take on the dish. My recipe uses fresh rice. If using day old, add about 4 tablespoons of broth or water when you mix it with the onions. This recipe also cooks the rice and peas together with the tumeric, which will make the rice yellow. I did this to save on cleaning an extra pot. You can, however, cook them rice and peas separately and add the tumeric to the peas.

You will need:

• 1 cup uncooked rice
• 1/2 cup uncooked yellow split peas
• 1 tablespoon of garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon of tumeric
• 1 1/2 tablespoon of salt
• 1 medium yellow onion, sliced into 1/4 inch strips
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil or butter
• 1/2 tablespoon of cumin
• 1 tablespoon of black pepper

1. In a rice cooker, add the rice, yellow peas, tumeric, garlic, 1 tablespoon of the salt, and 3 cups of cold water. Prepare according to your rice cooker’s instructions. If you don’t have a rice cooker, add the ingredients to a saucepan and cook covered until the peas are soft, at least 20 minutes.
2. After ten minutes of cooking the rice and peas, put a skillet on medium heat and add the onion, olive oil, cumin, pepper, and the rest of the salt. Saute the onions until soft.
3. When the rice is done, mix the onions with rice/pea blend in a bowl and stir well. Adjust the salt as needed. If you are using day old rice, add it to the onions first with the broth and let it rice rehydrate.

If I keep finding dishes like this, I’ll be eating breakfast for dinner more often. What do you eat for breakfast?

By the way, that image is copyright Waguang and like this post is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 License.