Eggs Haemoglobin

Eggs modifier always makes a splendid weekend brunch, whichever of the species you happen to choose. Eggs Benedict started it all of course, spawning such hamless variations as Eggs Florentine (spinach), Royal (smoked salmon), Neptune (tuna) and that mass-produced, bastard half-cousin Eggs McMuffin. Whatever you stick between the egg and the toasted muffin, it generally turns out pretty superb.

I decided to try adding my own variation to the canon, and looked to the traditional British fried breakfast to find the ideal filling: black pudding. This was not mere fancy, my family has the stuff in its blood. As a wee boy, my grandfather used to make his pocket money mixing black pudding up in the back of the butcher's shop, stirring the giant cauldren of boiling blood and fat while the butcher tossed in the oats and spices, waiting for the mix to congeal. As childhood memories go, not exactly Cider With Rosie.

I'd planned on buying a full black pudding link, chopping it into big cubes and making a fashionable tower of fried bloody goodness. Unfortunately, I got to Waitrose too late and they only had the wider individual slices of Bury pudding left, languishing in their little plastic packets in the bottom of the chiller cabinet . I soon cheered up when I realised the slices were almost the exact same size as the muffins. Clearly, Eggs Haemoglobin was simply meant to be.



I used super-healthy wholemeal muffins for this dish, and in that vein my hollandaise sauce also needs particular mention: while one ideally wants the blood pudding congealed, this is not true of the blood pumping through one's arteries. Silky and decadently rich as real hollandaise may be, it is nevertheless an emulsion of eggs and clarified butter and so about as healthy as smoking a carton of filterless Gauloises for breakfast. As this was meant to be hangover recovery food, an alternative was necessary.

My version of the hollandaise uses a savoury custard made from virtually fat-free yoghurt, and so the science is completely different to the traditional emulsion of fats: egg yolks are whisked into the yoghurt and then slowly heated together in a bain-marie, allowing the yolks to form a network of proteins which holds the rest of the ingredients together. Lemon juice is added to speed up the formation of the protein strands, while the bain-marie ensures the sauce isn't overheated, cooking it slowly to achieve a thicker and more velvety texture.

I whisked a 500ml pot of plain yoghurt with three egg yolks and the juice from half a lemon, then cooked it in the bain-marie for about twenty minutes. This is a great recipe for the lazy cook as it doesn't need the constant and crucial agitation of a real hollandaise. I took the rubbish out, made some tea and emptied the dishwasher while it was cooking, whisking perhaps every three minutes just to evenly distribute the heat.

The sauce has thickened when it evenly coats the back of a metal spoon, and at this point I added another egg yolk and a big knob of butter, whisking them into the warm sauce to make it richer and more glossy. A teaspoon of dijon mustard and plenty of salt and pepper finished the sauce, which went into the fridge overnight. This is perhaps the most significant difference between a custard hollandaise and the real thing: letting real hollandaise cool down is a disaster, allowing it to split and spoil, which generally means cooking the whole thing laboriously from scratch on the day. Putting my version in the fridge only improved the flavour, taking the bite out of the mustard and softening the taste of salt to let the lemon juice stand out. Better yet, in the morning I only needed to heat it through in a pan and pour.



Hungover, a cup of coffee in one hand, I toasted the muffins, fried the black pudding, poached the eggs and assembled the lot on plates before spooning over the warm sauce. I dropped some cherry tomatoes in the frying pan while things were cooking, letting them blister on the bases and cooking through their juices, which made a refreshing and tasty accompaniment.

This dish is totally recommended. The mustard beautifully matched the earthiness of the black pudding, and while the sauce lacked the silky mouth-feel of a full-fat hollandaise, in the trade-off we got a superbly light sauce with a fabulous lemony bite, and perhaps three years saved on our lifespan.

(I should add that hollandaise sauce can also mask a thousand sins. My eggs poached poorly and came out flat and straggly, but still ended up looking most jolly wrapped up in their little yellow blankets, and of course tasted fabulous to boot).