The last asparagus dish: with eggs and healthier "hollandaise"

So sadly, it's the end of the English asparagus season. The traditional last day of picking is the longest day of the year, which was yesterday. So you might still find it in shops and markets for the next day or two.

I made this kind of celebratory brunch as a farewell to English asparagus, and just because it tastes good. It's a bit more effort than I usually go to in the morning, but I decided it was worth it. Plus, I had some of the "hollandaise" left over for another meal.

There's no reason why you need to restrict this to a morning dish. You could swap the toast or muffins for a bed of couscous, or maybe some crushed new potatoes, and you'd have an elegant lunch or dinner.

Spicy eggs for a lazy weekend brunch

Here's a spicy, flavour-packed brunch for a lazy weekend morning. Or it could equally be a lunch or supper, if you're not keen on spices too early in the day.

This recipe is from Sunshine on a Plate by Masterchef winner Shelina Permalloo (£20; Ebury Press). It's a dish from Mauritius, whose global melting pot of flavours can be seen in the mixture of ginger and coriander with parsley and thyme, plus plenty of heat from the chilli.

Here's what I did with the rest of the duck eggs

So I still had some lovely local, organic duck eggs, left over from making the wild garlic carbonara. For some reason I'm not a huge fan of poached duck eggs - the yolks are delicious but I'm less keen on the slightly translucent whites. So I made scrambled duck eggs, which is wonderfully rich as well as showing off their gorgeous golden colour.