Breakfast at the press of a button

Rrishi Raote cooks up a list of gadgets that will have your breakfast ready at the press of a button.

It’s so much fun to be a food snob. Once upon a time it was just wine and cheese over which people would put their noses up into the air. Now just about every class of food has its own praise-singers, not excluding the anti-snobs who proclaim the worth of street food.

Rare meats, patés, truffles, sauces, artisanal breads, all made with skill and dedication, are very desirable and command rare prices. However, these fine edibles tend to go with social meals like dinner, where they can be properly discussed and dissected.

What about breakfast? It isn’t a meal that has flowered in recent years. Traditional breakfast foods like idlis, parathas, omelettes, French toast, poha, all require time and some skill to make, as well as good and fresh ingredients. That’s not easy when breakfast has shrunk to a mere energy booster between morning alarm and office commute.

As a result, the instant foods industry has done well out of breakfast: cold and hot cereals, ready pancake mixes, granola bars — things you can slurp up, grab on your way out, nuke in the microwave, or consume in the car.

But there is class in all things. And now, although the range of options is still limited, appliance-makers and product designers can offer you some very stylish ways to breakfast, at the flick of a switch. It’s the best of both worlds: convenience for the working person, and style and individuality for the connoisseur.

Welcome to breakfast, machine-style.

First, coffee. More and more people are making coffee their morning drink of choice. In the US, the world’s biggest coffee market, 65 per cent of all coffee is drunk at breakfast. In urban Italy and France, it’s not considered breakfast unless there’s a small cup of powerful coffee to wash down the brioche and jam.

Most café coffee tastes (dare one say it) rank and swampy, especially if you take your coffee black. The fault is usually in the quality of the coffee bean, and in how, and how long ago, it was ground. If you’re a coffee snob, you will buy better beans, such as Kopi Luwak, from coffee berries which have been passed through the digestive system of the civet. It costs $300 a pound. So, set up your own coffee bar at home, and make the most of your gourmet beans: invest in an expert coffee machine.

Morphy Richards’ Roma Pump Espresso Coffee Maker is not cheap at Rs 9,995. For that money you get a high-pressure machine, which extracts flavour quicker and better from ground coffee. You can control both the steam (for frothy milk) and the strength of the coffee. It is manly looking, in brushed steel and black plastic. Or try Kenwood’s machine, with similar qualities but a white plastic finish, at Rs 11,990.

But that’s small beans compared with, say, the Jura-Capresso ENA5, which retails for up to $1,650 (about Rs 80,000). This amazing machine grinds, tamps down, brews and delivers the coffee, and then cleans itself. You have five grind-fineness settings, can adjust coffee strength, temperature and amount of coffee to suit, and froth in two options — and save energy while doing it, too.

Don’t even think about the Clover, a legendary hand-built machine that sold at $11,000 (about Rs 5.3 lakh) each for two years until Starbucks swallowed the manufacturer in 2008. You can buy it second-hand, but expect to pay a premium. The Clover has yet more options, as well as an ethernet port to upload your recipes to the Internet. Ask it nicely, and it may even walk your dog.

For food you can sink your teeth into, you are more limited by technology. A machine can’t make a sandwich. But it can toast your waffles to perfection. Try the KitchenAid Nickel Pearl waffle iron, at $250 (about Rs 12,000), which rotates for evenness and offers browning options. If you provide the sandwich, the Breville Panini Griddle and BBQ, also $250, will toast it carefully. You’ll have to buy these on the Internet.

Bread and coffee dispensed with, you may want a glass of fresh juice or a nutritious smoothie. Try the Morphy Richards Food Fusion, at Rs 7,995, a large, two-speed juicer which can digest large and haphazardly cut fruit chunks. The pick of the bunch, however, is the Vita-Mix CIA Professional Onyx Bar Blender, at almost $600 (approximately Rs 29,000), which really does everything in the kitchen that involves changing the texture of food — it will chop, knead, mince, grate, juice, purée, blend and mix. Worth it.

Look hard and you will find some of these hubristically named machines in the Indian market. Service and support may be tricky, but you’re a globetrotter and you need equipment that looks at home in your sleek kitchen. So think long-term, and remember that even if your electricity bill skyrockets, you will be breakfasting like the Jetsons — at the press of a few buttons.