Menemen! For single men!

I've never been a fan of the English breakfast. The vision of so much scorched flesh writhing on an overloaded plate hardly inspires the palate at any hour of the morning. The traditional English fare was always enough to send me back to the bedroom for another two hour's sleep, and if breakfast is supposed to prepare you for day ahead, well, I'm hardly needing gargantuan quantities of protein required for toiling in the fields, driving cattle or installing lifts in the tower of Babel.

My days consists of approximately three hours working on a computer, four hours reading and taking notes, and four hours talking.The most important meal of the day needs to provide only enough for these activities, plus sufficient reserve at the end of the day to feed the cats, load the washing machine and climb under the covers.

And while the traditional Turkish breakfast deserves a post all to itself, there is one dish of Anatolian cuisine that I am superbly excellent at preparing: voici menemen.

Yes, it is a silly name.

In the Western part of the country lies a small district of the same name, but not its namesake. There are even two events, the Menemen Massacre of 1919 and, eleven years later, the Menemen Incident. The incident in question was a distasteful affair during which an anti-secular Sufi and self-proclaimed prophet (aren't they always the latter) rode into town with his mates, and, with the goal of reinstating Islamic law in the newly secular nation, attacked a garrison, killed it's lieutenant and paraded the unfortunate's head about town on a stick. I really, really hate fundamentalists of every ilk.

Anyway, the whole incident probably put all the citizens off their breakfast for quite some time, though this doesn't really matter since there appears to be no connection between the town's beheaded lieutenant and the dish itself, which mysteriously looks like mashed up, decapitated head. Quirky.

According to another group of people I detest - purists - memenen has to contain egg. It also has lots of diced tomatoes and green pepper, onion and parsley. Season to taste. I like to add cheese and sometimes sucuk, lightly spiced but often yucky Turkish sausage, and here the purist would also interject.

Recipes state that you should score, peel and de-seed the tomatoes. Who the Hell has time for that? I simply cut the tomatoes and pepper into small bits and leave out the onion because we all know what effect that noxious bulb has on our bodies. Fry it all, add the cheese and egg (if you must), season to taste.

There are a number of menemen purveyors in my neighbourhood but, even as a part-time smoker, I object to scoffing breakie while inhaling a truck load of other diners' cigarette smoke. At nine in the morning. Turkey is the only place on the planet where men are truly addicted to nicotine on this level.

I also prefer to make and eat menemen at home because I can eat brown bread and not the poor white substitute offered in restaurants that contributes to the Turkish male's, and my belly. A close friend tells me the the glycemic index of white bread is startlingly high, so it's off the menu for good.

Anyway, breakfast is more fun when the cats join in and try to crawl over my plate, repeating the routine daily even though neither of them like hot food, nor any of my cooking for that matter.

Lastly, I saw this on a website:

This is a quick, fix dish for breakfast in Turkey. Menemen is commonly
preffered (sic) by single men since it is easy and quick

Yep, if a Turkish man's mother, girlfriend, sister, grandmother, aunt or any other female with tenuous filial link isn't in das Küche, he ain't gonna be taking long to cook. In fact, he'll go to join his cigarette-chuffing mates at the restaurant I mentioned earlier.

Turkish men don't cook. I guess they're right too. Moustache with apron has never been a fashion fad.