Julia Child is a wonder. Her down-to-earth instructions for the infamously difficult sauce we call hollandaise has changed my life. Changed. My. Life.
If you've ever tried to make hollandaise sauce (and I hope for your sake you haven't), you know how easy it is to make really, really greasy scrambled egg yolks instead of hollandaise sauce. The idea is to very slowly, barely cook the egg yolks while suspending them in melted butter. It's a "heterogeneous" mixture, meaning the butter molecules never make friends with the egg yolk molecules; at best, they tolerate each other, and at worst...they fight until you have greasy grossness on your hands.
But Julia Child, with the help of an electric blender, takes the terror out of hollandaise sauce. What I find fascinating about her masterpiece, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is that when she was writing the first edition, she was doing so to an audience of American cooks who had no concept of electric appliances such as blenders, food processors or mixers. They didn't exist until the 1960's, and when they came on the market, they completely changed the way many French dishes were prepared. Time consuming, labor intensive tasks like dicing vegetables, beating egg whites and whipping cream were suddenly reduced to a few seconds and some minor dish cleanup.
Julia recognized how electric appliances had revolutionized American kitchens, and she amended her book's second edition to provide alternative instructions which incorporated mixers, blenders and food processors. As much as she appreciated the time-saving qualities of electric appliances, you can tell she was hesitant to let the art of making certain dishes by hand fall by the wayside. I can't blame her, either. Can you imagine making meringue, whipped cream, hollandaise sauce and all manner of chopped, crushed and creamed dishes by hand for twenty years, only to watch an electric machine do in two minutes what took you an hour to do?
Her cold attitude towards kitchen appliances comes through in her carefully segregated instructions for hollandaise sauce. She gives separate recipes and instructions for making the sauce by hand and making the sauce using a blender, but she makes a point of noting that hollandaise sauce made in a blender "lacks a certain quality" because it's "too homogenized". Too homogenized? Isn't that the idea?
She's particularly snarky about the blender when she says that making hollandaise sauce in a blender is so simple it could be accomplished by "an eight year old child". Really, Julia? What kind of mother gives their eight year old a blender?
Even with the luddite snarkiness of her instruction, her blender hollandaise sauce is genius. I've made hollandaise sauce by hand - both successfully and unsuccessfully - and I don't care if Julia thinks I'm taking the easy way out. I'll never make hollandaise by hand again.
Her instructions for poaching eggs are also very helpful. If you follow them, you're almost guaranteed to succeed, avoiding the unintentional egg drop soup of failed poached eggs.
The rest of the making of eggs benedict is very simple. I strongly recommend frying the bacon in advance, to avoid having to prepare five ingredients at once. Eggs benedict is one of those recipes that literally will take over your stove top if you don't time your preparation properly.
Serves: 2
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
6 slices of bacon, fried (not crispy), drained on paper towel and set aside
16 medium asparagus shoots, washed and de-stemmed
3 Tblsp. lemon juice (for asparagus)
4 large, fresh eggs (for poaching)
1 Tblsp. vinegar
4 slices of bread or 2 english muffins (optional)
Small bowl of cold water
for the Sauce:
3 egg yolks
2 Tblsp lemon juice
1 1/4 cup butter, melted in a saucepan
Put vinegar into 2 inches of water in a large pot and set on the stove to boil. Saute asparagus in lemon juice until bright green and tender, then set aside.
Heat butter on the stove until foaming or boiling, being careful not to burn it. Place the three egg yolks and lemon juice in a blender and blend together at medium speed for 3 seconds. After the butter has reached foaming temperature, remove the center lid from the blender, blend at medium speed and slowly drizzle hot butter into the egg yolks. Be sure to add the butter slowly, checking to see how the sauce is thickening. Don’t add the melted butter’s white residue to the sauce. After all clear butter has been added, blend on high for 3 seconds more. Sauce should be smooth, creamy and the thickness of soft mousse.
Hollandaise sauce by hand: melt butter in a small saucepan and set aside. Beat egg yolks in a separate shallow stainless steel pan with a wire whisk. Slowly warm the egg yolks while constantly beating, then slowly begin to drizzle melted butter into the sauce. Whisk each amount of butter into the egg yolks before adding more. Keep the pan’s temperature on low to avoid scrambling or curdling the eggs. After all butter has been whisked into the eggs, continue whisking on very low heat until the sauce thickens. Remove from heat and whisk in lemon juice.
If the sauce is not going to be used immediately, store it in a covered jar sitting in tepid (not hot) water.
To poach the eggs, bring the pot of water and vinegar to a boil then reduce to a low simmer. Carefully drop eggs in whole, cracking eggs as close to the surface of the water as possible. Gently push the sides of the egg white up over the egg yolk with a slotted spoon. Cook at low simmer for roughly 4 minutes, or until egg yolks are as soft or runny as you’d like them to be. When the eggs are done, remove them and place them in the bowl of cold water. This washes the vinegar from the eggs and stops them from overcooking. Once the eggs have been washed, drain them with a slotted spoon and pat dry with paper towels.
Finally, toast the bread or english muffin, if you’re including it.
Each serving should be separated into two piles with four asparagus shoots, 1 1/2 bacon slices, one egg and 1/4 of the hollandaise sauce each. Assemble layers together in this order, from bottom to top: bread, asparagus, bacon, eggs, hollandaise sauce.
Thank you, Julia Child!
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