The hunt for a decent alternative to ‘canape’ continues. There have been some fine suggestions – open-faced sandwich, catch-me-if-you-canape, the tenuous pun of ‘tin-monkey’ – but, alas, there’s been nothing that has quite done the job. Perhaps, like ‘foodie’, it’s just a word we’re lumped with.

Instead of simply wriggling out of giving away a book, I’ll now chuck one at whoever can come up with the best *cough* canape idea for Christmas – one that doesn’t involve endless faffing but something more interesting than a piece of atomically orange salmon on yesterday’s bread.

Meanwhile, I think this one is a cracker. It comes via Jim Fisher, a chef based in France who runs the wonderful and cryptically named cookery school Cook in France. Jim uses smoked duck and poached quail egg, so this isn’t 100% accurate, but it works well enough.

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Makes 12
12 Clarence Court quail eggs
Smoked ham
Bread (I used a brioche)
2-3 tbsp mayonnaise – home-made or decent shop-bought
A lemon

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– With a bite-sized-ish cookie cutter cut 12 pieces of bread and 12 slices of ham. Whisk a squeeze of lemon into the mayonnaise and taste. You could of course make hollandaise instead, which would be more of a classic dressing for eggs benedict, but I’d wager you probably can’t be arsed.

– In a dry frying pan (or oven/AGA) toast the pieces of bread and keep warm. Add a drop of oil to the pan and fry the quail eggs over a medium heat for about a minute, seasoning with salt and pepper as you go.

– Put a slice of ham on the toast and top with a quail egg and a blob of lemon mayonnaise. Eat.

This recipe was developed for Clarence Court eggs.