That’s more like a weekend breakfast, when you’ve got more time to play with eggs, especially if you’re like me and don’t have a lot of experience with poaching eggs. I like poached egg especially when someone else does them 🙂 For me it’s a bit too much hustle. But sometimes if I’m fancy enough I’ll make a poached egg. In this case I made four: first two wasn’t as good as I wanted, number three and four was good enough to be placed in the photo. Not perfect, but fine. If I would make this salad for myself I would make the egg yolks runny, but as my partner likes them more set they are set, not as photogenic though.

Poached eggs are pretty tricky, so there’s couple tips I found helpful:

• don’t boil too much water, couple centimetres (about 2-3 inches) will be just enough
• use fresh eggs – with time egg white becomes more runny and less firm when poaching
• don’t crack the egg straight into boiling water – place it in a small bowl or a cup, so you’ll make sure that egg yolk is fine and there’s no remains of shell
• add some vinegar to the water – you won’t feel it in the egg though, but it will help the egg white not to become wispy
• if you fail, no worries, it’s still an egg, still edible, maybe not perfectly presentable, but you can enjoy it as it would be 😉

And as we don’t eat bread I placed the eggs on the spinach salad. If you eat bread, you can prepare a toast and place the egg on it. For my salad I chose baby spinach, cherry tomatoes (I love slightly sour taste of tomatoes combined with eggs), Padron chilli pepper, Cheshire white cheese and some avocado for extra nutritious fats. I made extremely quick mustard sauce to break the slightly bland taste of the egg. Mustard and mayonnaise are I think my most favourite sauces. I’m not a fan of hot and spicy sauces, but there’s something special about vinegar spiciness in mayo and mustard, that I really like. If you like them as well, give it a try and mix them together – perfect sauce for eggs.

poached eggs with mustard sauce on a spinach salad

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 large fresh eggs
• ½ tsp natural rock salt for poachnig
• ½ tbsp white vinegar for poaching
• 1 tbsp mayonnaise
• 2 tsp spicy mustard of your choice
• handful of baby spinach
• couple cherry tomatoes
• 1 Padron chilli pepper
• crumbled Cheshire white cheese
• half of avocado
• natural rock salt
• pinch of coarse pepper
• splash of extra virgin olive oil
• optionally: hot chilli sauce

DIRECTIONS

Start with preparing a salad and sauce, so when you poach the eggs everything else will be ready. Combine together 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise and 2 teaspoons of your favourite mustard. If you like it more spicy, optionally ad a splash of hot chilli sauce.

Take your favourite plate, arrange spinach leaves, cherry tomatoes, sliced Padron chilli, crumble some cheese and slice half of avocado. You can do it the same as I did, or layer everything on top of spinach. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

In a medium size pretty shallow pot boil some water, no too much, about 2-3 inches (5-7cm) high should be fine. Add half a teaspoon of salt and half a tablespoon of vinegar. Crack the eggs into a small bowls or cups (one egg to each bowl), this way you will be able to place them gently in the water with no worries about breaking the egg yolk or getting the pieces of shell into the water. Bring the water to boil. Gently place the each egg in the water and reduce heat, water should be simmering. Cook for about 2-3 minutes if you’d like runny yolks or 3-4 minutes if you like them more set.

Remove eggs with a slotted spoon, and place on a paper towel. Drain the excess water, and using a spoon you can cut off wispy edges.

Place the eggs on the spinach salad and drizzle with mustard sauce, and sprinkle with coarse pepper. Your breakfast is ready.