Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon

My mum started to cook this on Christmas mornings when I was a teenager, and it became a bit of a tradition.

Per person:

a handful of shredded smoked salmon (trimmings will do)
2 eggs
Butter
Pepper
Wholemeal toast

Beat the eggs in a bowl and add the smoked salmon and a healthy grind of black pepper. No need to add salt; the salmon will add all the salty notes you need.

Melt butter in shallow frying pan or saucepan and when it's frothing, put the toast in the toaster and press the lever, add the eggs to the butter and beat them with a wooden spoon or, better, a wooden fork until they're creamy. No matter how many eggs you use, this should take as long as it takes for your toast to cook. (Don't wait until after the butter has stopped frothing because then it'll be too hot.) As soon as they are creamy but no longer runny, serve on the toast; you don't really need to butter the toast (I never bother) but you could if you really, really love butter. The ideal beverage accompaniments are O.J. and good coffee. Or something cold, grape-derived, dry and sparkling. Either, really.

Don't be tempted to make this with equal amounts of salmon and egg. Heating the salmon enhances the salty flavour, and you don't want to be eating great masses of hot smoked salmon. The dominant ingredient should be creamy scrambled eggs, with tasty shreds of smoked salmon suspended in it here and there, the whole given fire and life by fresh pepper. (If you're scared of creamy eggs and insist on always cooking them until they're rubberised, you don't deserve to eat scrambled eggs in the first place.) A perfect bracing Christmas brunch, this will keep you going until the late afternoon feast and will provide a useful lining for any alcohol that gets thrust at you in the middle of the day.

This year I was given Half-Canned Cooks, the fabulously rakish new cookbook from Lupe Pinto's Deli, the finest Mexican/Spanish/American deli for miles and an institution round our way, and I use the word 'institution' at least partly in the sense of a place where people sometimes behave in colourful and alarming ways. I've long owned a copy of their brilliant earlier book Two Cooks and a Suitcase, have eagerly read the new one and I'll be cooking from it in weeks to come.

Happy holidays, all!