Nopi's courgette and manouri cheese fritters

The big boom in restaurants doing breakfast has resulted in many more places offering inventive cheese dishes to start your day. This was an amazing dish I came across at Yotam Ottolenghi's Nopi last week where I attended the launch of David Lebovitz's glossy new book Ready for Dessert - an odd venue, really, when you think about it when it's all about puddings not cheese. Although I don't see any reason why you shouldn't make his delicious Ricotta Cheesecake with Orange and Aniseed for breakfast. Apart from the fact it contains a good slug of marsala, perhaps.

Anyway, back to Ottolenghi's fritters which were amazing. Lighter than fritters have any right to be though I'm not sure if you followed the recipe which I happily came across in the Guardian here they would be the puffy balls in the restaurant rather than the slighly flat burger-shaped patties in the recipe shot. They come with lime flavoured yoghurt which was wonderfully refreshing and some punchy bitter leaves.

They also served some really delicious chard and feta (I think) pastries at Nopi with black and white sesame seeds on the base which look really easy to knock up.


Sometimes the cheese thing gets a bit out of hand, though. This rather unlovely dish with house braised beans, salted ricotta, lemon, mint and poached egg at the hip Clerkenwell breakfast spot St Ali was less well thought out. Particularly as you had the rather weird option of ordering it with a kipper.

Have you come across any good breakfast dishes that include cheese lately?

PS you can see many more beautiful pix of the breakfast delights at Nopi on David Lebovitz's blog here. Meaning more beautiful pictures than mine ;-)