As Jeremy was wandering around YouTube, he happened upon a video titled, Eggs Benedict 5 ways. It was named after 2 people, a retired Wall Street wiz named Lemuel Benedict who ordered “buttered toast poached eggs, crisp bacon and a hooker of hollandaise” as a hangover cure in 1894 at the Waldorf Hotel, and an 1860’s Delmonico’s frequenter, Mrs. LeGrand Benedict who went straight to Chef Charles Ranhofer wanting something more unique to eat. We thought it would be fun to see what sort of interesting combination we could invent to create our own spin. What came were 2 sandwiches. One made with pulled pork, the other with greens and mushrooms.
I’ll be honest. This was my first hollandaise and my first double-boil. I’ll take it from here, Darling. All that goes into a hollandaise is egg yolk, butter and lemon juice.
You see, heat cooks the eggs and along with acidic lemon juice (it has a ph of about 3) kills bacteria, but you have to continuously whisk the mixture in the double boil or the eggs will solidify into essentially, scrambled eggs.
What’s a double boil, you ask, essentially a pot of simmering to hard-simmering water with a bowl or smaller pot on top. It keeps things warm without putting things on direct heat. It is good for melting chocolate, or in our case, for making hollandaise sauce. In our opinion, ours tasted like mustard. We’ll need to further investigate with different methods to see if next time we can get something closer to that French lemony butter everyone else describes it to be.
Let me tell you, whisking meringue by hand is tiring.
Last time, I used an electric hand mixer. Since Jeremy was here and we were using such tiny containers, the beaters wouldn’t have fit. It took both of us to get it thick enough to scoop. Turns out, it was slightly over-whisked. You can see the clear run-off on our baking sheet. Into the oven that went for 4 minutes.
Yeah, According to Kitchn, there are various stages of whipping: no peaks, soft peaks, firm peaks, and stiff peaks. When egg whites are over whipped, the fat and water will separate with no coming back. The whites turned crispy and brown for the most part.
The reason that they tasted so bland was because someone forgot to season them before scooping. That’s executive chef rule #4. Season everything as needed. These whites need it otherwise, they taste exactly like Styrofoam. As a last resort, we threw down a large pinch of black pepper over the cooked whites on both sandwiches.
Why did we choose pork for our first sandwich? My mother had some in the fridge from a few nights ago fully cooked and just needing to be reheated. I watched so many “Cutthroat Kitchen” challenges where the chefs had to harvest their ingredients out of tea sets, macaroni sculptures and massive sandwiches that I started taking spare left-over dinner parts and turning them into new dishes. It’s a bit unconventional, but then again, it does bring new life into what may seem boring the second and third time or otherwise will rot behind the milk. Since we’re not being judged for it by Antonia Lofaso or Jet Tila, we’ll make the best of what we have in stock. We slapped a thin slice of sharp cheddar halfway and let it melt inside.
Quick side-note, the color of the cheese is the result of dying and the sharpness has to do with the aging process: the longer it’s aged, the sharper it will be. Sharper cheese tends to have less moisture and will not melt as easily.
On the other half of the bagel, we had an arugula salad, stirred up a little olive oil with a pinch of onion powder, garlic (aka, the staple seasoning of the Italian-American home) and added a tiny bit of salt and black pepper. We decided to mix in some spinach with the arugula to balance out the peppery taste. Turns out (according to Biology Q&A) the same chemical found in arugula is also found in mustard plants. So to avoid having too much of the same thing, we mixed in some spinach.
Let’s talk about #1 the pulled pork. It had a BBQ taste and came off as being very meaty (obviously). I’d give it a good 3.5 out of 5. It was a sandwich by definition, but from what we tasted, it was a burger in disguise. I agree. None of it was dried out, and it had that fatty pork flavor coming through in every bite. It became the main focus of the sandwich, putting the meringue down to non-existence. If we had followed the original 1896 cookbook recipe using my brother’s ham, it might have tasted more like the typical American breakfast. For all of you kosher folks, I would suggest using sliced beef, or sirloin. If people can order a breakfast burger with an egg, this substitution is only a slight breach from that.
Now, let’s discuss sandwich #2 the garden. Every bite seemed complete from the elusive umami flavor in the mushrooms, the bitter arugula balanced by filling vitamin-rich spinach, our tangy hollandaise and the sweetness of toasted honey wheat bagels. Again, the baked meringue was completely lost. You’re Right. As it’s mostly vegetables, this one is satisfying, but not enough to hit like a cinder box. What really struck us was how hard the pepper hit the tongue. We really overestimated when it came to how much to season the individual contents. It may be a sheer disappointment to eat bland food, (As Gordon points out in all of the restaurants on “Kitchen Nightmares”) but it doesn’t help anyone to drown it all in salt and pepper. We must remember; the key is balance. If nothing is overpowering or understated, everything will have a chance to shine in its own right.
What if next time, we reel in a seafood meat like crab or tuna mixed in with mayo and celery and no cheese? That would feel lighter on the stomach and satisfy any cravings for omega-3. I remember having salmon benedict scones when you took me out on my birthday to Tailored Tea in Latham. I remember it being a savory, dune of runny yolk, buttery sauce and salty Canadian bacon with a personal tea pot on the side. That was made in the classic style. If we can find a stellar place for some fresh crab, we’ll simply have to put it to good use. Catch you later! Bye!
