Rosti with fried ducks' eggs and bacon

Serves 4

Serve the eggs on the rosti with the bacon scattered over (Jason Lowe)

Rosti is traditionally a Swiss breakfast eaten by farmers but it is now eaten all over the world, usually as a garnish. I suppose that if you want to cook this at breakfast then it would involve a fair bit of messing around in the morning, but you can easily get all the preparation done the night before so that you just have to pop it in the frying pan the next day. You can make about 14-16 individual rostis in a non-stick pan or make a larger one and cut it into four.

Some recipes use raw, grated potatoes and some use par-boiled. Peronally, I prefer par-boiled potatoes as I find they tend to come out a bit lighter and crisper.

1kg large floury baking potatoes, such as King Edwards, parboiled for 10 minutes in their skins; remove the skins after cooking and cooling
1 large onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
120-140g piece of streaky bacon or a piece of pancetta, cut into rough cm dices
4 ducks' eggs
Vegetable or corn oil for frying
60g butter

Grate the potato into a bowl, mix well with the onion and season. Heat a non-stick frying pan with a tablespoon of oil.

Add the potato mixture to the pan, gently pressing it with a spatula or fish slice and cook for about 4-5 minutes until crisp. Then flip it over, add some butter and cook for the same amount of time – until crisp – then keep warm in a low oven.

Meanwhile, fry the bacon in a little oil until crisp and fry the ducks' eggs in butter; then serve the eggs on the rosti with the bacon scattered over.