A full English breakfast

“Welcome to our family home for over 30 years and yours – breakfast served in the dining room – from 7:30 to 9 am – is a full english breakfast for your use – local history and children’s books outside are for your use”

The text around the artist’s work explains the functioning of a bed and breakfast or B + B as he paints in bold letters. A typical English breakfast is had with leisure and comfort. V.G. Abhimanue’s version contains a white glass plate with a blue design, meat, fried eggs, nuts, a peeled orange, butter knife, cubes of butter, salt, pepper, a tea pot and a slice of bread. Similar to an English breakfast, which has specific elements,a custard is incomplete without eggs.

Caramel Custard by Shruti Rao

“This is my Ajja’s recipe for caramel custard, something he made almost every weekend for my mom and her siblings when they grew up in Mumbai (then called Bombay). My ajja was the general manager of a welding company called Advani Oerlikon and he travelled abroad a lot for work. When he was home, with his family, he would make this for Sunday lunch. During the lockdown last year, I was away from my home and family and was craving something that reminded me of it. My ajja very sweetly sent his recipe for me, typed on whatsapp. It had a ton of typos, but a lot of love and warmth and humour, which is what my 92-year old ajja is known for with the whole family”

List of ingredients

For 4-5 people
Time: 30 minutes (plus cooling time)

4 Eggs
2 cups Milk
10 teaspoons Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence or ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

Method

Beat the 4 eggs thoroughly.

Take 2 cups of milk in a bowl and add 7-8 teaspoons of sugar.

Add beaten eggs and essence.

Next, burn 2 teaspoons of sugar over the stove in a separate vessel until brown and allow it to cool.

In this vessel, pour in the milk-egg mixture over the cooled burnt sugar, and steam in a pressure cooker for 15-20 minutes.

Remove the vessel from the pressure cooker and keep in the refrigerator for cooling.

After a couple of hours, take out the vessel. Take a knife and rotate it around the edges of the custard.

Put a lid or plate on the vessel and turn it upside down. In a way you are placing the custard like placing Ganapati on a plate to enjoy!