Flaked Salmon with green beans and faux hollandaise sauce

It is an odd phenomenon that in exciting, but slightly stressful situations, that people in our family will turn to cooking or at least eating, gourmet.

Before I was to get on a plane back to SA after a wonderful holiday in the States and then in London for two weeks, that a certain resident of a house in Putney will remember a rich lunch meal of smashed baby potatoes, grilled salmon with an apricot glaze with asparagus and hollandaise sauce. Did we manage a glass of Bordeaux white with it? I can't quite remember, but I do remember the meal precisely because I made it as I was keeping one eye on the clock to make sure that this culinary delight was served and eaten before I had to take that tiresome trek out to Heathrow.

I'm not entirely sure what this is about, a kind of combination between being set on using the best ingredients in the fridge if we are not going to be present to eat them (which shows an unexplained possessiveness over our food) and a last meal, if you will. Whatever stressful situation may arise out of travelling at least we will be secure in the knowledge that we dined like kings before we left the house for the airport.

My sister left to go to Australia for, ostensibly forever, but for the meantime just six weeks to be with her boyfriend on Friday.  And sure enough, at 8 am she was (if you'll excuse the pun) fishing the salmon steaks that she had bought earlier in the week out of the freezer. "Shall I make us some salmon for breakfast?" she yelled from the kitchen. Followed, a few short seconds and some scrambling sounds of freezer drawers opening and closing, with "Don't you want to make us something delicious with this chorizo sausage? " and " I definitely should make these pies, they'll just go off!"

Bearing in mind that I am not a morning person at all and that at 8 am I was in all likelyhood not awake until I could not ignore the repartee emerging from the kitchen, with some instinctual knowledge that on the occasion that one's sister is leaving the country, one should invariably cook up a feast, I managed to yell back: "If you're going to make the salmon then you should probably use the rest of the fresh green beans in the fridge."

"Here's your tea!" trilled my sister. Knowing that this was the only lever that had enough leverage to extricate me from my bed.

As I came into the kitchen, I pointed out that she should have rather used milk instead of a whole egg to put on the pies so that they'd turn brown.

"How should I do the salmon?" she asked.
"Steam it," I said while swallowing the first sips of warm tea, "over the green beans."

"Here," and I was passed two thirds of a beaten egg in a cup. "Can't you do something with this?"

"Well do we have lemon?" I asked peering into the fridge.

We did and so the remaining egg mixture went into a stainless steel bowl and was whisked briskly with a quarter lemon's juice.

Hmmm, I could not quite remember how to make a hollandaise sauce but it seemed like a good idea to cook the egg and the salmon and beans having been removed from the pot, I whipped the stainless steal bowl over and carried on whisking.

Ah, that was better, the sauce was thickening. And not a lump in sight! A crack of black pepper and coarse salt, and a lug of olive oil (just because that seemed like the right thing to do) and I was done.

A not exactly, but a rather lovely lemon-tasting and lower-fat version of hollandaise sauce completed the salmon that had been flaked over the beans.

Tea was done: now it was time for breakfast and an hour till we had to leave to go to the airport.