Part 7: Recipes 7

Don't want to make this too much of a GWS type of post, but Eggs Benedict and its variations are my favorite. And after watching York help Emily make it I decided I had to make some this weekend. I even made the Hollandaise sauce from scratch, which I always do, because it isn't that difficult and tastes much better than the powdered or premade stuff from the store.

So first off, the sauce. You're going to need egg yolks. These eggs were bought fresh from the farmer's market.


Then add lemon juice and beat the eggs for a while until they get a little stiff. I kind of, um, miscalculated how much juice would be in this half of lemon. But it's ok! It'll just be a tarter Hollandaise sauce. I've tried all kinds of Hollandaise recipes from Alton Brown to the Le Cordon Bleu's recipe. I've found Tyler Florence's recipe to be the least hassle, and base my Hollandaise sauce off of it.


After this step, move the mixture to a double boiler. Or in this case, a metal bowl set over a pot of simmering water. This is really the only tricky part. You want to avoid direct heat because you're not scrambling the yolks. You also want to be careful of how much the water is boiling or how hot the pot/bowl is getting because of this. If you're doing it right, the egg yolk mixture will get thick really quickly. Keep whisking!


Gradually add melted butter as you continue to whisk. This amount of yolk will horrifyingly use about 1/2 a cup of butter. Some recipes called for clarified butter, some not. But unless you have clarified butter or ghee just lying around, it's more work without that much of a taste difference in my experience, so I just use regular ol' butter melted in the microwave. You'll notice at this point the sauce is now silky and lighter color.


And that's pretty much it. Remove from heat, add salt and cayenne pepper and you have Hollandaise sauce.


The difficult part of Eggs Benedict for me has always been poaching the eggs. But someone once told me that when the water is hot and ready, just stir the water to create a whirpool and drop the eggs in using a cup and the eggs will sort of swirl into their own neat little poached egg circle. That technique works really well. I know some people also like to add a little vinegar into the water as well to help the egg cook into a nice little circle.


Toast up a split English muffin, and warm/fry up some Canadian Bacon or ham. It seems York and I agree that ham is the superior choice. I used some ham steak and put the poached egg on top with some sauce and served it with a side of sauteed spinach.


Look! A nice fancy meal you can enjoy any...wait. Uh, what's that noise?

"Don't want to diiiiiiiiieeeeee..."

Hm, I think they're here, Zach.



Well, it's just two of them. I think this can be handled pretty easi...



Crap. Those oily, dark spots mean there's just more coming. Looks like I've got some cleaning up to do in my kitchen.

EDIT: Reread this thing several times and still made some minor grammatical errors.