Eggs royale with smoked trout & yuzu hollandaise

To make the hollandaise, add a little water, just 2-3cm or so, to a heavy-based pan set over a low heat and bring up to a very gentle simmer. Set a large, heatproof bowl over the pan, making sure the bowl doesn’t come into contact with the water. A metal bowl will get very hot very quickly, increasing the chance
of the sauce overheating and splitting, so a thick, heatproof glass bowl is ideal.

Add the egg yolks and yuzu juice, along with zest if you have a real yuzu, to the bowl, season with a little salt and freshly ground black pepper, and whisk together for a couple of minutes, over a low heat, until it starts to thicken a little. Then begin to add the melted butter, a teaspoon at a time at first, increasing to a thin, steady trickle after the first few additions, whisking continuously. Keep adding the butter little by little until it’s all incorporated. Remove the bowl from the pan and rest on the worksurface every now and then as you whisk to cool the sauce a little before returning to rest above the pan. Once all the butter is incorporated you’ll have a sauce of mayonnaise-like consistency. At this point, take a couple of tbsps of the hot water from the pan below the bowl, and whisk into the sauce until it’s of a thick pouring consistency. Turn off the heat, but leave the pan and bowl on the hob, the residual heat will keep the sauce warm.

Toast the muffins, butter and keep warm.

To poach the eggs, take your largest, deepest frying pan and fill it with boiling water from the kettle. Set over a high heat, and bring it back to the boil, then reduce the heat so the water stays at a very gentle simmer, barely boiling at all. Once the temperature is steady, crack an egg into a glass, and pour into the water as close as possible to the surface. The idea is to slide the egg in as gently as possible so it doesn’t spread out too much. Repeat with the others, you can in theory cook all 8 at once if the pan is large enough, but I tend to cook 4 at once so I can time them more accurately. Cook the eggs how you like them, about 2 minutes for very softly cooked, to about 4 minutes for firm.

To serve, put an egg on each half of muffin. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, and arrange the smoked trout on top. Drizzle over a little hollandaise and a sprinkle of chives.

If you’re cooking the eggs in batches, get half your guests eating as soon as the first lot are ready while you poach the rest of the eggs, a poached egg waits for no one!