Warm Poached Egg Salad with Frizzled Bacon and a Sizzling Sherry Vinegar Dressing

You can make the croutons ahead.

To do this pre-heat the oven to 180C, gas mark 4 then in a bowl toss the cubes of bread with the paprika and some salt first then add the olive oil and toss them again so the oil is evenly distributed. Now spread them out on a baking tray and bake them on a high shelf for 10 minutes until they are golden.

When you are ready to make the salad first poach your eggs (you can watch how to do this in our Online Cookery School Video), and whilst they sit in the frying pan, take another frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil until it’s very hot, then add the lardons, cook for 4 - 5 minutes then add the onion, garlic and pepper. Keeping them on the move and turning down the heat if it gets too hot, cook for about 6 minutes until the ingredients are toasted round the edge. (Meanwhile arrange the salad leaves on 4 plates.) Now add the sherry, sherry vinegar and the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan.

Let it all bubble a bit and season with salt and pepper. Place the warm poached eggs centrally on the salad leaves on the serving plates, pour the warm dressing over everything, and finally sprinkle on the croutons. We eat this with crusty baguette to mop up the juices – a wonderful accompaniment.

NOTE: If you like you can make this with red wine and red wine vinegar or white wine and white wine vinegar just to ring the changes.