says:
It looks really tasty and I will have to try that very soon.
The way this series is going, though, at some point adding bacon to the meal is going to start with the instruction "First catch your pig..."
A few days ago, we offered wobbly dining fans the Post-Pub Noshographic - a procedural flowchart to steer our beloved readers through the after-boozer neckfiller decision-making process. That handy guide serves for immediate deployment as you stagger through the front door, a gibbering and dribbling mess in search of immediate …
Proper hollandaise means the person you send to catch and peel the pig will be back long before you've mastered it ;-) And no, you can't make it and freeze it, it goes 'over' after about an hour, so you have to start afresh each time. The lemon is what takes it from a greasy drizzle to simply the best thing in the world ever, you cannot bypass it, it cuts the greasiness.
To be honest, a good chunk of white toast (unsweetened bread) can substitute well for the muffin, a bit of fresh spinach is nice instead if avocado (which is an aberration anyway), and then your preferred cured pork product and poached egg, topped with the hollandaise.
Forget coffee, you need tea with this breakfast, and ideally a great view and bit of sunshine. Because the hollandaise is such a pain in the arse, go to a decent cafe (not many serve eggs benedict because of the hollandaise) and sit outside and feel like a king.
Proper hollandaise isn't that tricky, check out Delia's easy hollandaise and foaming hollandaise recipes. It helps if you have one of those hand blenders with a whisk adapter, and just add the butter a dribble at a time. If it starts to split you can usually recover it with a blitz from the whisk unless you are completely ham fisted. Don't forget a splash of white wine vinegar and a couple of pepper corns for the poaching water.
Eggs benedict is my get out of jail free card with the missus.
Anything tastes better with Bacon.. too much faff for a morning after hangover cure though, as tasty as it looks! think I'll stick with the triple fried egg chili and chutney sauce sarnie from last time.. which is also improved with the addition of Bacon (tried that yesterday) :-)
too much faff for a morning after hangover cure though, as tasty as it looks! "
Agreed. Anything with a prep. time of more than 30 minutes is no good for breakfast, especially after a night on the sauce. Although it does look nice even if it is just a bacon and egg sarnie with some fancy sauce on it.
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Easier to buy the muffins and warm them under the grill after cutting them in half.
Adds a bit of crispness too.
I'll bet most people end up with spicy scrambled eggs when they try to make the sauce.or it splits.
If it does, add a few drops of water and whisk.
Looks wonderful but I've got to make do with roast chicken today.
Think Semolina is wheat, Polenta is Corn.
You can pick up Cornmeal reasonably easily, I have a great big bag of it in the kitchen notionally labelled as an caribbean ingredient.
Works great with pizza as well (and works as a handy non-stick layer on a pizza stone) - maybe the single piece of inspiration I ever got from Dominos pizza.
Oh course you can usually buy it labelled as Polenta, but usually seems to be more finely ground, and it's the slightly more gritty texture I like.
A big bag should be the "germ-free" variety. Otherwise the corn meal will turn rancid over time.
Eggs Benedict - bah. Another good use for corn meal is as a finish to chile. The basic chile pepper (this is southwest US cowboy style) consists of pulverized chile peppers (ideally a mix of poblano and some serious chili like tepines or scotch bonnets for heat, the jalapeno can be sliced or diced and used raw for garnish), oregano and cumin (ideally toasted or better added to oil) before browning the meat and onion in a dutch oven. Add a very healthy dose of mixed chile pepper, oregano and cumin to the pot with the browned meat and onion. Deglaze with a decent beer (use a lager, don't waste the ale). Add tomatoes crushed (canned or fresh) simmer until really tasty. Add a handful of corn meal and stir it in, then simmer until thickened. Stash some fresh chopped onion in a bowl in the refer. AFTER that go to the pub. Return with your hang over, reheat the chile now well rested and better tasting than it was when you left, top it with onions and jalapeno and extra sharp cheddar, and pour a beer to wash it down.
Polenta is rough ground maize meal, semolina is the hard bit left over after grinding durum wheat. Corn is generic for any grain crop except rice: wheat, rye, barley, maize & sorghum spring to mind. However in some ex-colonial variants of English corn is synonymous with maize.
> "Semolina is the hard bit"
Errm, not quite. In the UK, semolina is just a stage on the way to flour. The first, wide spaced, rollers generate a coarse product which is screened to separate the semolina from the bran. Semolina is milled again to produce flour. It's the particle size that distinguishes semolina from flour.
Where's the pedant's pedant icon when you need it?
Hollandaise sauce requires clarified butter. You melt the butter, let it stand for a bit, and then pour the liquid slowly into a bowl, except for the proteins at the bottom. Skim any proteins (white foam) from the top. In India you can buy clarified butter called ghee.
If you're in the US you can buy Clarified Butter... or, to follow up Daniel von Asmuth's comment, you can buy ghee from a grocer that carries Indian or Pakistani goods. It begs the question as to why. One of the main purposes of making ghee is to preserve it, which is also why butter is often salted. Just zap unsalted butter in the microwave and skim any foam and you're done. Why spend more on it when it really is the work of a few seconds to make?
This was going so great. I love Eggs Benedict, and this had the great addition of swapping out a ham slide ("Canadian bacon" in American-ese) for thin and crispy proper bacon. This taught me how to hand-make an English muffin. And then...and then...
Green snot. You put the green snot vegetable on an otherwise-perfect Eggs Benedict. What next, Jar Jar Binks in "El Reg: The Movie"?
We just finished up and the dishes are in the dishwasher... I wish I could upvote this article a hundred times. Absolutely yummy. The only differences we did was no avocado and since I was out of back bacon, I used some smoked pork butt.
For my fellow 'Mericans.... find a local butcher who does custom smoking and meats. Back bacon is available and it's far better than the normal streaky, chem-laced, commercial stuff.
But no, wait - I'm not advocating vegetarianism or other perversions.
I recently found a cafe near Glasgow doing a wonderful take on Eggs Benedict, using black pudding. It works amazingly well with decent BP because runny-yolked egg is a perfect complement to blood-soaked oats.
Well worth a try - and if you miss the bacon that much stick it in a sarnie and eat both!
Not commercially. The butcher I use does his handy work to the pig and takes some of the various bits (hams, bacon, back bacon, some of the pork chops, etc.) to his smokehouse. (It's a commercial place that will smoke any meat). No chems, just wonderful smoke.
Ok.... technically, smoke is a chemical but then so is salt if you like your ham Virgiinia style.
"Ok.... technically, smoke is a chemical but then so is salt if you like your ham Virgiinia style"
Technically, anything made out of atoms is a chemical. (Hence, "periodic table of the chemical elements.") That's why I'm wondering how you got chemical-free bacon, since it would exclude chemicals including water, proteins, fats, vitamins, etc. ;)
Smoke is absolutely full of very harmful chemicals. This belief that "natural chemicals" are better than carefully processed, scientifically controlled, chemicals, is asinine. It's purely an extension of "the old ways are better". I hope you go to pick up your non-commercial, chemical-free bacon on your horse, wearing clothes you made yourself.
Melt butter, put eggs and other ingredients into liquidiser, whizz until mixed well, then slowly drizzle hot butter in the top.
That way, the heat from the butter cooks the eggs, avoiding all the bain Marie faffing.
I add Bacon Jam as well.
(I make my Bacon Jam with free range streaky bacon, red onions, garlic, cholula sauce, demerara sugar, cider vinegar and Calvados)
Looks great, though I agree with the commentards who think it would be better without avocado, cayenne and vinegar.
I'm intrigued that you chose to cook the muffins on a griddle. The closest thing to this I've ever heard of is oven-bottom muffins, but I don't think they're turned over, and their appearance suggests that they're mainly cooked by oven heat. I plan to try making griddled bread when I have the time.
I'm reasonably sure that the so-called English muffin didn't exist in England until about 30 years ago, when it started to appear in supermarkets. The fact that it's normally covered in cornmeal suggests foreign origins. It used to be nearly impossible to buy cornmeal, even in London - you had to find a shop that carried imported American foods for expatriates. I don't think anyone knew that it was the same as polenta.
Admittedly "muffin" is a fairly ambiguous name. Britain seems to have an endless regional variety of names for small cakes of bread (bap, barm cake, plain teacake...).