All-day Breakfast Salad

An all-day breakfast salad doesn’t sound particularly inviting, to me anyway. I think it is the title – ‘all-day breakfast’ implies a greasy spoon café serving flabby sausages; watery, undercooked bacon and cold, damp toast; eggs swimming in fat. My husband is however a devoted fan of the English fry-up and frequently complains about not being 'allowed' to indulge as often as he would like. In truth, I definitely wouldn't stop him - and I am not really one to stop myself - but I don't find fry-ups very appealing.

That said, the picture of the all-day breakfast salad in Jamie's book and the combination of ingredients did appeal. So today, I made Jamie's breakfast salad for lunch. I tossed fried bacon slices, black pudding and chunks of bread with watercress and baby spinach (as opposed to his suggested endive and cress) in a dressing made with English mustard, white wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Then I added two poached eggs, which Simon had poached because he is the household egg-cook. Usually he uses a poaching pan but today he was brave and just broke the eggs into simmering water; it worked, more or less, but was less aesthetically pleasing than Jamie's, which made him mutter but I thought he did a great job.

The salad was delicious - the flavours really work together, with the egg yolk running into the salad leaves and the dressing off-setting the bacon and black pudding. Another keeper. Simon, never one to miss an opportunity to grumble that I deprive him of a good fry-up, ate his with relish and pronounced it delicious, adding, gleefully, that is is a sneaky way that he can get a fry-up in the guise of a salad...