Eggs Benedict

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I have, currently, a top three favourite foods. Don’t quote me on this after about a month as it might have change – though in general these three are mostly a constant. Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Sandwiches. – See here for a diatribe.
2. Pasteis de Nata – beautiful Portugese custard tarts. You’ll never eat anything better.
3. Eggs Benedict.

I don’t know why I love Eggs Benedict so much – but I do. Perhaps it’s the mixture of creamy Hollandaise sauce, creamy rich egg yolk and sharp, acidic lemon juice. Nor is the salty bacon to be forgotten about. Luxurious, rich, deeply deeply satisfying on a deep, human level. Make me it in the morning and I’ll propose on the spot.

FYI – Hollandaise is a classic french sauce made from butter and egg yolks. It is an emulsion based sauce, like a mayonnaise and is very easily split

However – time for the tragedy. You hardly ever get a good one. Many lower end restaurants tend not to make their Hollandaise fresh because…well it’s quite precarious and tricky and you can’t really multi-task it. If you’re making a Hollandaise, you’re making a Hollandaise. You can’t keep it either – it has to be made fresh and so many restaurants used cheats, not real Hollandaise’s – and I can always tell. Either that or there isn’t enough lemon. You need the lemon badly, to cut through the rich butter sauce and the yolk – without it the balance of the dish is thrown irrecoverably off tilt.

Anyway – here is my recipe for it. I think it’s perfect but achieving perfection with this recipe is only achievable up to a point when following a recipe. What lifts it from great to special is in the fine tuning of the Hollandaise. Once it’s made you need to taste it and use your intuition as to how much lemon juice and salt to add – just taste, taste, taste and when its creamy but with a definite acidic twang to it – it should be perfect.

I serve 2 eggs each….serve one if you are weird.

Recipe

Ingredients (Serves 4):

8 large free range eggs
8 slices bacon
4 english muffins, halved (or just slices of bread if you like)

For the Hollandaise:
2 egg yolks
1.5 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 peppercorns
juice of one lemon (get two just in case)
110g butter, melted
salt and pepper

required: clingfilm

Method:

1. Start with prepping your eggs for poaching. What follows is the most fool proof method in the world for poaching eggs – if you take one thing out of this blog post, take this. Take a large square of cling film and lay over a teacup. Poke the clingfilm a little bit inside the cup so there is a bit of a dip, where you can crack an egg into. Oil the clingfilm with some vegetable oil. Crack an egg into it. Gather the sides of the cling film up, squeezing out any air and twist to make a little egg parcel!! Do this for all your eggs and set to one side. This way you can cook all of your eggs at exactly the same time and you have no risk of them coming apart in the water/sitting around while you cook the rest!! Plus they are always, consistently the perfect shape. See photos for a bit more help.
2. Set a pan of water on to boil.
3. Fry your bacon in oil until crispy and cooked. Set to one side.
4. Now, it’s time to start your Hollandaise. This is where things get tricky and you have to be in the zone with your timings! Take a small saucepan and put the vinegar and peppercorns in it. Reduce over heat for 30 seconds until it has reduced by half. Remove the peppercorns and set to one side.
5. Set up a bain marie – place a sauce pan with about 2 inches of water in it over medium heat and get a glass bowl that fits in the top of it without touching the metal bottom of the pan ready. In the bowl place the vinegar and two eggs, place over the saucepan and continuously whisk until the egg yolks thicken, and go pale and creamy. Make sure that the heat doesn’t get too fierce and occasionally take it off the heat to whisk it. You want the eggs to reach a ‘ribbon’ stage so that you can see the trails that the whisk has left in it, after the whisk is removed. This will take about 2 minutes.
6. Remove from the heat and add about 2 tablespoons, or a trickle, of the melted butter to it and whisk immediately to combine it in. Then put it back over the heat and continue to whisk. Repeat. Back on heat, whisk. Do this continuously, always always whisking until all of the butter is combined. Be very careful not to add the butter to fast or to get it too hot. If you do this the sauce will split – the butter and the yolks (oil and fat) will come apart from each other and it will look like scrambled egg – not what you want and totally irredeemable!!! Take your time with this stage – it’s the tricky bit! Don’t worry if it is very thick – when you add the lemon juice it thins it out.
7. When your sauce is just about finished toast your muffins and put on your eggs to poach for 3 minutes.
8. Finish the sauce by adding the juice of one lemon, whisking again and seasoning with salt and pepper. Taste to see if you need more lemon or seasoning!
9. Remove the eggs after 3 minutes, remove the cling film and serve. They should have beautiful molten centres!
9. Plate by laying the toasted muffins on a plate, then a slice of bacon on top of each, then the poached egg. Finish by spooning the sauce over generously. YUM.