Just about my favourite breakfast. Providing it's washed down by a Bloody good Mary of course.

By way of comforting myself whilst Rachel and I are on our spring breakup (sigh!), I treated myself to my first attempt to make Eggs Benedict from the muffin up. Well, except for curing the ham and laying the eggs of course.

I chose a muffin recipe that uses yoghurt in with the water, which seemed to work perfectly well, Paul Gayler's workmanlike version of Hollandaise sauce, and crispy grilled Parma ham.
Being temporarily unencumbered by a car, I did all my shopping on Sunday at the local Asda, so was extremely limited as to the quality of ingredients. Although I was able to find some pre-packed super-thinly sliced Parma ham, I had to make do with their standard Sad Chicken brand of old eggs. I no more believe that their chickens are organic and free-ranging than I believe their pork products are naturally puce. More surprisingly, it was impossible to find semolina to dust the muffins, because their baking section is ludicrously small and ineptly disorganised over several unrelated aisles. This is either because Asda do not want their customers baking their own products, lest they discover how anaemic are the in-store goods on offer, or because Asda shoppers have lost their capacity to cook flour.

And the result?

A bit disappointing to be honest - I won't be giving those restaurant breakfasts a run for their money just yet.
I couldn't fault the muffins (misshapen and semolina-free as they were), but my Hollandaise was far too tart (Note To Self: Add the lemon juice cautiously and taste the sauce as you go) and the ham was just wrong.
Difficult to say quite why it was so wrong - perhaps it would have worked better if I hadn't grilled it and just laid it on raw, but somehow my mouth was expecting a thick juicy slice of "Canadian" smoked bacon, and what it got was a thin crispy layer of dry-cured Italian lard. Just plain wrong!

Also it's probably a good job I was only cooking for one, because turning out individually poached eggs is a painfully slow process. I do need to figure out a faster serving method for more customers.

Oh, and I didn't have any bloody Bloody Marys