Silky Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon & Chives

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 100 g smoked salmon, roughly torn
• black pepper
• 1 tbsp lactose-free milk
• 20 g butter
• 2 tbsp chives, finely snipped
• 0.5 lemon, for squeezing
• Buttered new potatoes, to serve
• Dressed green salad, to serve

Method

1. Crack the eggs into a bowl, add the milk and a good pinch of salt. Whisk hard until pale yellow and fully combined — no streaks of white, no jellied bits. Season now, not later: salt in the raw egg dissolves properly and seasons every curd from the inside.
2. Melt the butter in a small non-stick saucepan over the lowest heat your hob will give you. You want it foaming gently, never colouring — the moment butter browns, the eggs taste nutty instead of clean.
3. Pour in the eggs and stir constantly with a rubber spatula in slow figure-of-eight motions, scraping the base and the sides. Every 30 seconds, lift the pan clean off the heat for a count of ten and keep stirring through the air. That on-off rhythm is the whole trick — it's what gives you tiny, custardy curds instead of rubbery scramble. Total time, around 4–5 minutes.
4. Pull the pan off the heat while the eggs still look slightly underdone and glossy — they should ripple when you tilt the pan. Residual heat carries them the rest of the way; wait until they look done in the pan and they're already overdone on the plate. Taste a spoonful and adjust the salt now — at the end, not at the table.
5. Spoon the eggs onto warm plates and lay the torn smoked salmon alongside in loose ribbons. Scatter generously with the snipped chives, grind over plenty of black pepper, and set a lemon wedge on each plate. A squeeze of lemon over the salmon at the table cuts the richness and wakes the whole thing up.