Power Brunch: Poached eggs two ways

Eggs are definitely one of my favourite ways to start the day. Not only are there so many ways to cook them (Poached, fried, boiled, scrambled, baked blah blah), but they manage to keep me full until at least elevenses, which in my opinion is impressive. Eggs have had a fair bit of bad press lately due to the fairly high cholesterol in the yolk, hence the anaemic and kind of gross looking egg-white omelettes that are popping up all over the internet. Not only are these poor people missing out on the most flavoursome part of the egg, in my frugal Yorkshire it also seems a huge shame to be wasting half an egg for silly reasons, especially as that's the part that contains some pretty important vitamins. As well as this, recent research has indicated that saturated fat, rather than dietary cholesterol, is the bad guy (you can have a gander over some egg facts here). So, if it's good enough to grow a little yellow chick from scratch, I'm pretty sure it'll be alright for me!

Anyway, I digress, back to breakfast. Here's a little recipe for a power pack of vitamins and nutrients to start the day. I only intended to use avocado to snuggle my egg on, but I found some leftover beetroot hummus in the fridge (as you do) so I decided to experiment. Firstly though, is the base of the dish: toast. If you can, make sure you use some nice wholemeal, seeded or sourdough bread or muffins, even if it's been lingering at the bottom of the bread bin for a bit too long it'll toast up beautifully. Light and airy white bread (think the kind perfect with a ham sandwich) is pretty useless here, as it tends to lose all form and smush onto the plate. This recipe is great if you've got a slightly over-ripe sorry looking avocado, because as you'll be smashing it up and covering it with an egg the beautifully sliced and uniformly green type will be wasted here.

(There's a very high chance your egg will look more attractive than this, I dropped mine!)

Ingredients:

• Enough wholemeal/sourdough bread
• 1 small avocado or half a large one
• Pinch of chilli flakes
• Salt and pepper
• (Optional) 2 tbsp beetroot hummus (Recipe to follow!)
• 1 large and very fresh free range egg
• 1tsp white vinegar

Method:

• Bring a small pan of water up to a gentle simmer (too rapid and your egg will break apart) and add the vinegar
• Meanwhile, toast your bread
• Halve, stone and peel the avocado (I'm yet to find the easy non-messy way to do this), then put in a small bowl with the salt, pepper and chilli and mush lightly with a fork
• Top the toast with the avocado and/or beetroot goodness
• Break your egg into a mug, then give the water a stir and quickly plop the egg into the centre
• Once the egg is poached to your liking (approximately 1-2 mins) lift out with a slotted spoon and dab try with kitchen paper. Then carefully slide it onto your topped toast, taking care not to drop it (oops)

Ta da! Delicious and nutritious brekkie in minutes!