Garden Herb Hollandaise Sauce

1. Pick the tarragon and parsley leaves off their sprigs and pop them on your chopping board with a small handful of chervil sprigs and chives. Finely chop the herbs – you should have around 5-6 tbsp chopped herbs. Set to one side.

2. Fill your kettle and boil it. Separate the egg yolks from the whites (save the whites for meringues) and slide the yolks into a heatproof mixing bowl. Add 1 tbsp cold water and whisk together. Dice the butter.

3. Half-fill a pan with hot water from your kettle and set the bowl over it, making sure the bowl doesn't touch the water. Set the pan on a medium-low heat so the water just steams. Add a cube of butter and whisk till it's melted, then add the next cube of butter and repeat. Continue till all the butter has been added and smoothly combined with the eggs to make a silky sauce. If the sauce starts to thicken too much or look scrambled, take the bowl off the heat straight away and whisk in 1-2 tbsp cold water to cool the mixture down. Turn the heat under the pan down and continue. If your sauce doesn't thicken up, turn the heat up under the pan and keep whisking till it thickens.

4. Take the bowl of hollandaise sauce off the heat. Add the lemon juice and the chopped herbs with a pinch of salt. Stir to mix, taste and add more salt or lemon juice, if you think it needs it. Serve the hollandaise sauce with poached eggs and toasted muffins for eggs benedict, drizzled over asparagus, or with baked or poached fish, such as salmon.