The Full Cypriot Breakfast Bagel
The full Cypriot breakfast bagel is a sesame seed bagel with smoky bacon, creamy scrambled eggs, tomato, lettuce, avocado, olives and sun-dried tomatoes. And it can be made gluten free by using gluten-free bagels.
So is this “recipe” just how to make this particular sandwich?
What? I can’t quite hear you…
Is this even an authentic Cypriot sandwich?
OK now take it easy. In fairness none of the EU recipe posts are authentic dishes – or sandwiches – from that particular EU country. They’re inspired – somehow – by an authentic dish from that country.
The problem I came up against here was not that I couldn’t find any good authentic Cypriot dishes. It was that I found this wonderful page with many authentic Cypriot dishes and I didn’t want to alter them. They just sound great as they are.
I had a vague notion of adding in more fruit to the dish with watermelon, grilled halloumi and mint. But it’s just right as it is.
Also, I kept eating the watermelon before I got around to making something I’d take a photo of.
By the way –
How good is watermelon?
So, I don’t know about you, but after eating watermelon I feel really really good. You know when people talk about eating clean and they are actually just talking about dieting? That annoys me. Not because I think there is anything wrong with changing your diet to lose weight. It annoys me because there are some foods that I feel cleaned by after eating.
Usually any fruit and vegetables with a high water content will leave me feeling cleaned inside after eating. And I also feel that way after raw carrots, and salads with curly parsley and/or fresh mint.
And I discovered that the food I feel most cleaned by is watermelon. I was amazed by how good it made me feel. Because I’ve been feeling exhausted – and kind of polluted – for the last few weeks months aeons? So I really noticed how good the watermelon made me feel and I checked online – it has anti-inflammatory properties.
I think the foods you find cleaning are very much down to your own individual body chemistry. So you might find completely different foods can give you this feeling. But watermelon – it’s pretty great.
Is there any watermelon in this sandwich bagel?
No.
How good is this bagel?
Actually this bagel is really good.
I got the idea from this site that said that a “traditional breakfast in Cyprus often consists of olives, juicy tomatoes and baby cucumbers, fried/grilled halloumi, eggs and lountza (Cypriot bacon/sausage) and often with fresh crunchy sesame-seed covered bread.”
Lountza is a dried smoked pork tenderloin.
As I read the description of this typical breakfast I thought – I guess that’s like the Cypriot version of the Full Irish Breakfast. A couple of days later, doing the weekly grocery shop I happened to see some sesame seed gluten-free bagels.
So I decided to try and turn their typical breakfast into a breakfast bagel. Sort of. I used smoky bacon rashers, which you’ll find in any supermarket. I also added in the some avocado to increase the amount of unsaturated fat in bagel. Because I think it’s more important to increase the ratio of unsaturated fat to saturated fat in your diet, than it is to decrease your overall level of fat consumption.
I normally don’t use smoky bacon because I feel that taste can overpower all others. But it works very well here.
This is really filling and quite nutritious. I like it a lot.
And I paired it with some watermelon and grilled halloumi cheese. Gorgeous!
I’m going to give the ingredients for making 4 bagels – but it’s easy to just make one portion as you can see from below.
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- single cream
- salt and pepper
- olive oil
- pat of butter
- 8 smoky bacon rashers
- 1 avocado, stoned, peeled and sliced
- 1 tomato, sliced
- 16 - 20 black or Kalamata olives, stoned and sliced
- 8 sun-dried tomatoes
- 4 sesame seed bagels, halved and toasted
- mayonnaise
Instructions
- Break the eggs into a deep bowl. Add in a generous splash of cream, a sprinkle of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Beat until well blended.
- Put a non-stick pan on high heat. Add in a teaspoon of olive oil. Add in a pat of butter and when that has melted, gently swirl the pan around so that the oil covers the pan. Then add in the eggs and move around the pan with a wooden spoon until they are all cooked. Scrape the cooked eggs onto a plate and leave aside for later.
- Add the bacon into the pan - you don't need to add any oil. When the bacon turns opaque turn over and fry until cooked to your liking. Remove the pan from the heat.
- Spread some mayonnaise on the lower half of the bagel, top with a slice of tomato, some lettuce, 2 slices of bacon, some scrambled egg, two slices of avocado, some sliced olives. two sun-dried tomatoes and finally the top half of the bagel.
- And that's it. Enjoy!
