Christmas 2010: Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon & Mandarin Orange

This was our first Christmas in our new home, so I wanted to make sure that everything was perfect. From the decor to the presents to the food. In the UK, we usually sit down for a 3-course Christmas meal around dinnertime. However, we always felt like we were overeating and too stuffed by the end of the second course to tackle dessert.

For Christmas this year, I decided to space out 4 courses throughout the day rather than cooking and eating everything in one sitting. I knew that I wanted to eat smoked salmon on Christmas day, so I decided to incorporate this into our first course, Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon and Mandarin Oranges which I served for breakfast.

The idea of combining smoked salmon and mandarin oranges came from a Christmas cooking programme I watched in UK some years ago. The chef had thinly sliced some clementines and then arranged the smoked salmon on top. I couldn't find clementines, hence I substituted with mandarin oranges since they were in season as Chinese New Year is around the corner. (Clementines is a variety of mandarin orange)

For the scrambled eggs, beat 7 eggs with some cold milk, season with salt and pepper and cook in a pan with some butter until soft and fluffy. Peel 1 mandarin orange (including the white skin) and cut into small chunks. You will need 200g of smoked salmon for 4 people. I plated it two different ways; one is a more playful take with a flower inspired theme, whereby you cut the smoked salmon into thin strips, then roll to form a rose.

Since the smoked salmon was quite difficult to separate and hence I couldn't cut them all into straight strips, which left me with lots of ununiformed shapes so I had to revise my plating of the food. This look is slightly more refined. Do prepare and plate the mandarin oranges and smoked salmon before you start cooking your scrambled eggs. And to finish, garnish with some sweet and juicy cherry tomatoes.

We also enjoyed some Pandoro, an Italian Specialty Cake which is available for sale around Christmas time in supermarkets like Cold Storage. To be honest, I did not really like it at first, as the cake had the consistency of bread and was rather dry. But, this was quickly fixed with a layer of butter and the cake is actually quite nice with a cup of coffee or tea.

Now, a little break before we moved on to the second course served at lunch time.