The summer I was thirteen, I went on a family vacation around some of the southern states. While we were in the area, we visited some of my parents’ friends in Atlanta and had breakfast at their house. I don’t remember much about the visit, but I do remember the breakfast. A plate was placed in front of me, and on it was a toasted half of an English muffin, a piece of something very close to ham, and a poached egg blanketed in one of the best sauces I had ever had the fortune of tasting. The dish was called eggs Benedict, and I was in love.
Eggs Benedict are curious. I don’t like English muffins or poached eggs at all individually, though I like Canadian bacon and would eat Hollandaise sauce on just about anything. Despite these mixed feelings about the ingredients, I adore the combination, and almost always order them if they’re on the menu. There are a number of variants on eggs Benedict, a lot of which you can find at Eggs Benedict New York. One of my favorites involves substituting a crab cake for the Canadian bacon, but when I decided to make breakfast this morning for some relatives who were in town, I decided to stick with the classic.
It doesn’t get much more classic than Julia Child and Jacques Pépin, whose recipe from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home I used via Leite’s Culinaria. I’ve made Hollandaise sauce from The Joy of Cooking before, and though this method is over direct heat, I found it just as easy. Hollandaise sauce is not a matter of difficulty, but rather of tedium; one must have the patience to stand whisking the eggs for several minutes before they thicken. The emulsion is actually easier than most since the butter melts into the sauce only as fast as it can be incorporated. I had also poached eggs before, but not in about a decade. I had since read about how hard it is, which made me doubt my poaching abilities. What I had read must have been some kind of sensationalist yellow journalism, however, since it’s a snap. I put about two glugs of vinegar into my wide pot of two inces of water (a useless measurement, I know), and broke the eggs as close to the water as I could get. Then I used a slotted spoon to cup the whites around the yolk, and turned it over in the water after it had cooked a bit. I didn’t time the eggs or test them for doneness, but I took them out once the whites seemed to have set pretty well and it resulted in a thickly runny yolk. With the eggs poached and the sauce made, the rest of the eggs Benedict was a snap.
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