Blue cheese scrambled eggs

This lusciously decadent brunch recipe comes in the form of silky, slow-cooked scrambled eggs, finished with blue cheese and, if you’re really going for it, a little dollop of mascarpone – great served with crusty sourdough bread.

The mascarpone I used was homemade – one of the most satisfying things you can do with some cream and a lemon – and this had a looser texture than the stuff you buy in the shops. If you’re using shop-bought, I suggest you beat it a little beforehand to break down the set structure and make it softer and more dollopable (that is definitely a word!). Or, you could substitute a drizzle of double cream and serve your scrambled eggs in the French style. Both ways are outrageously yummy.

If you do choose mascarpone, the heat from the eggs will melt it a little and it will run in creamy rivulets. Mmmmmm, creamy rivulets…

I am very happy to tell you that this recipe offers the opportunity to showcase an interesting Swedish cheese. Now I must confess that in the past, the words “interesting”, “Swedish” and “cheese” would not have easily made it into a sentence I uttered, but I am cheerfully rectifying that. On the hunt for unique ingredients for my day job – chef at The Artisan Pizzeria in Stockholm – I have been researching Swedish cheese. It turns out that there are quite a few hand-crafted, unpasteurised cheeses available here that never make it past these shores. All waiting for me to explore. Who knew?

So these scrambled eggs are accented with such a cheese – Oviken Magna, blue cow milk cheese made in Jämtland, mid-Sweden, by a farmer couple who are dedicated to their craft.

Now eggs are one of the things that fascinate me the most about cooking. A basic, universal ingredient eaten by innumerable nations (unless you’re vegan). Yet there are so very many ways to prepare eggs. And so many more variations within those methods of cooking them. I cook eggs at least five times a week, yet I’m not at all sure they’ve turned out exactly the same any of the hundreds of times in my life that they have graced my plate. You can tweak the edges, and boy do I encourage you to do so, because the possibility for variation is infinite.

So it is with multiple experiments that I have concluded that soft is how I want my scrambled eggs. I spent the first two thirds of my life completely unable to eat an egg yolk, in any form, so it is one of the greatest developments of my palate that I have grown to like not only yolks, but also to eat my eggs as barely cooked as possible. Definitely now raw, but soft – moist, creamy, satiny…

I once read an impassioned treatise on scrambled eggs by Nigel Slater – one of my absolute, long-term, food heroes. He insisted that you have everyone seated at the table before even thinking about starting the eggs – scrambled eggs wait for no woman.

I agree.