Layers.

Chef Bottura's Cacio e Pepe risotto ...

First, he simmers the cheese in water, then refrigerates the mixture until it separates into three distinct layers: protein solids on the bottom, a thick broth in the middle, and a Parmigiano cream on top. The broth is slowly stirred into the risotto, taking the place of chicken stock, while the cream is added toward the end of cooking, giving the risotto a luxurious texture and little need for any additional salt.

For breakfast, I would suggest topping the leftovers with a lightly fried egg.

Nailed.

Chef Henderson sings of breakfast ...

As you wake up in the morning and become aware of your innards and extremities you may require a late breakfast, but be careful - too late and we move into brunch territory, which is something we don't want to do. Brunch is the bastardisation of two great moments in the culinary day into a damp squib, neither one thing nor the other. Then there is the unanswered question: what do you drink with brunch? A wineless purgatory!

Continuing ...

But I've nailed my colours to the mast on this subject in the past, so let's return to breakfast and the breakfast greats. One, on a train travelling from Glasgow to London, with the view of the Lake District speeding past as you attack a brace of kippers and a glass of Guinness. It doesn't come much better (just remember the kipper-burps that stay with you a while, but nothing can be perfect). The next great breakfast: the Caffè Florian on St Mark's Square. The odd coffee, a chocolate ice-cream and a Fernet; we had to remortgage our house to pay the bill, of course, but what the hell - it's Venice. And then there was the time, many years ago, when I went to Prague with the Architectural Association before the Velvet Revolution. Wandering back to our hotel early in the morning we were met by a happy scene of folk eating freshly baked bread with coarse sea salt and drinking beer - not something you come across every day.

Sing along ...

An editorial note: A breakfast of creamed herring on rye bread with Guinness rules!

Well-Provisioned.

Israëls, Pancake Day, 1885

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Free.

Cave-Phantoms.

In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.  Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?

Samuel Beckett

Nothing -- I mean absolutely nothing --- should ever interfere with properly partaking in breakfast.

Nothing ... especially on the weekend.

Marmaladed.

I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don’t suppose I have ever come much closer to saying ‘"Tra-la-la" as I did the lathering, for I was feeling in mid-season form this morning.

P.G. Wodehouse. from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Splendor.

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Franz Kafka

Gunge.

Fergus Henderson hints at Scotch Woodcock ...

Be gentle with your egg and hopefully it will be gentle to you. Scrambling, for example, should be a slow process, done on low heat with a good knob of butter in the pan. Crack your eggs into the melting butter and gently stir, breaking the yolks. Don't season with salt until the end - it will throw the scrambling out of kilter - and don't lose your nerve and turn the heat up to try to rush things; just stir them occasionally.

When they're cooked to a satisfactory state, you can't do much better than serving your scrambled eggs on buttered toast, but let's go a step further into the world of savouries. Traditionally, savouries were offered at the end of the meal - not a sweet, though, and accompanied by a glass of Port. My favourite savoury is Scotch woodcock. For ours at St John we make an anchovy gunge which is then spread on toast and topped with scrambled eggs. Some prefer the anchovies whole and the eggs poached. This neatly leads us into the world of the poached egg, a very useful culinary bubble on top of smoked haddock and steamed green asparagus and corned beef hash that magically creates its own sauce.

CONNECT 

The proper recipe can be found in Fergus' latest, The Book of St. John ...

The "savoury" is a rather old-fashioned course, taken with a glass or port at te end of a meal.  This family grouping includes not only the Scotch Woodcock but Welsh Rarebit and the Buck Rarebit, too, which is a rarebit with a poach egg on top.  It's not often that you fancy such a thing after your dessert.

Throw away the shackles of antiquated convention!  Liberate the Scotch Woodcock from its after-dinner perdition!  Take a well-spread piece of anchovy toast -- a good white bread is preferable -- and cover with creamy, lightly-scrambled eggs.  Your breakfast is ready.

The anchovy gunge.

INGREDIENTS

7 garlic cloves, peeled

a pinch of black pepper

1 tin of anchovies in oil (Ortiz)

225 ml extra virgin olive oil

a splash or red wine vinegar

PREPARATION 

1. Place the garlic and pepper into a food processor (or use a pestle and mortar if you have time and energy), and crush to a fine purée, then add the anchovies and allow them to break down. Start to add the oil, then the vinegar to taste. Check flavour for seasoning.
2. This dressing, depending on how thick you make it, can have many uses.
3. With less oil and vinegar added you will have a very firm mix - the Anchovy Gunge - which you can use as a dip for vegetables (as here), or spread it on toast with sweet roasted or pickled shallots, or a boiled egg. 
4. With a little more oil and vinegar added you should have a looser, though still emulsified mixture, which is ideal for dressing boiled greens or broccoli - which can be eaten on their own or with lamb or beef.

Spoke.

Sargent, Kenneth Grahame, 1922

The smell of that buttered toast simply spoke to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.

Kenneth Grahame, from the Wind in the Willows

Sustenance.

“Are you ready for some sausage patty?” he asks.

“I don’t know if I can handle sausage,” I say. “I’m still a tad jangled from last night. You?”

“A little bit hung over, but that’s to be expected of a Marine of fly-fishing. I’m famished from forging the smithy of my soul. I wrote a poem this morning! Come, we must find sustenance ..."

CONNECT

Anti-sausage.

There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she probably hadn't breakfasted. It's only after a bit of breakfast that I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.

"I suppose you haven't breakfasted?"

"I have not yet breakfasted."

"Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or something?"

"No, thank you."

She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage league or a league for the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of silence.

P.G. Wodehouse, from My Man Jeeves

Truly.

The colonel breakfasted with the leisure of a fighter who has been clipped badly, hears four, and knows how to relax truly for five more seconds.

Ernest Hemingway, from Across the River and Into the Trees

Breakfast.

Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home — and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed — breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruit, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, … right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music, all of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.

Hunter S. Thompson

Thank you, Justin.

Chunky.

Second.