| Well, not quite as simple as it sounds. Smoked salmon and poached egg is a classic combination, but when I made this hangover cure for breakfast with my friend Alex after a late night drinking real ale and playing poker, I was determined to do something a bit more adventurous than the basics. I chose to prepare Columbian Blacktail hens' eggs in a sauce made from fromage frais and moutarde de Charroux, served on toasted olive bread with sautéed cherry tomatoes. The result was something very special. Ingredients 1 small loaf of wholemeal olive bread 4 Columbian Blacktail hens' eggs 200ml fromage frais 4 tsp French mustard 6 cherry tomatoes 1 tsp white wine vinegar 1 tbsp caster sugar paprika cayenne pepper herbes de Provence sesame oil olive oil margarine Maldon salt white pepper Method |
 | Fold the mustard slowly into the fromage frais, checking until the perfect balance is achieved to suit your taste (remember that you can easily make a taste stronger, but it's hard to make it lighter). Grind a little Maldon salt and white pepper into the sauce and leave to the mixture to infuse. |
| Cut the olive bread into thick "doorstep" slices and toast lightly, then spread with olive oil margarine. |  |
 | Boil a saucepan of water for poaching the eggs in. Add plenty of salt to the water and a little white wine vinegar (this helps the egg's albumen to coagulate around the yolk faster, producing a superior result). A good tip when poaching eggs, especially if you have to coordinate their timing with many other elements, is to half-cook them and then remove them into a bowl of iced water. When ready, you simply drop the eggs back into the simmering water for a brief moment before plating up. This technique, known as "refreshing", is used for many ingredients in the professional restaurant environment to stop the cooking process and control timing. |
| While the eggs are poaching, slice the tomatoes in half and sautée them in sesame oil with a little caster sugar and a pinch each of paprika, cayenne pepper and herbes de Provence. Now spread out the smoked salmon across the toast as a cushion for the poached egg to sit on. Pour the sauce over the eggs and add the sautéed tomatoes. |  |
