Back To Black

I never claimed to be original. I do though regularly require comfort eating and when that coincides with breakfast / brunch time (or anytime between 6am and 4pm, if I'm being honest, and I'm flexible on the 4pm), the ultimate guilty, waist line expanding pleasure must be Eggs Benedict.

Me and Hollandaise are not always the best of friends. The first time I made it, it was a dream - rich, silky, smooth, the perfect consistency... The subsequent four or five attempts? Runny, buttery disasters. The equipment was the same, I was the same, the basic ingredients were the same but it just refused to congeal or, when it did, would separate rapidly into unappetising layers of the sorts of cholesterol involved.

Not one to be daunted though, I thought I'd give it a go last weekend because I was determined to combine my love of Eggs Benedict with another one of those (okay, slightly cliched) combinations I adore: scallops and pig product.

In the new(ish) undercover bit at Borough, a couple of very nice ladies are selling assorted Scottish smoked products including some excellent salmon and Hebridean peat-smoked scallops. They also sell Stornoway black pudding which is: a) for my money, as good as black pudding gets; and b) the sort of pig product that would probably taste pretty good with those scallops. Then I saw the Flour Station's incredible English muffins on a nearby table. It was all the inspiration I needed for a Sunday brunch of epically blokey proportions.