Eggs Benedict on Cream Cheese Biscuits
Ingredients
4 slices of Canadian Bacon
4 eggs for poaching
For Hollandaise
4 sticks of unsalted butter, melted, separated and kept warm
4 egg yolks
Juice of 4 lemons (room temperature)
Water (room temperature)
Tabasco, salt, white pepper to taste
Recipe
Bake biscuits according to packaging instructions and set to the side. Fry Canadian Bacon and set to the side.
To make Hollandaise
Melt butter and keep in a warm area, allowing to separate with the butter fat rising to the top and the solids to the bottom. Add the egg yolks and 2 oz of water to a large, stainless steel bowl and whip them into a froth with a long, flexible whisk. Then place bowl over a large pot with steaming water. Whisk over steam, tilting bowl radically on it's side so that you can whip the longest strokes you can, fully utilizing the side of bowl. Remove from heat when you need to, so the bowl never gets hotter than your hand can stand. When egg yolks are fully cooked and ribbonny in bowl, (before they scramble!) remove from heat, still whisking until cooking stops.
Take a wet dishcloth, form into a ring on your counter top and place bowl on top so stays still. Ladle and whisk in some of the butter fat from the top of your butter bowl, NOT the water and solids on the bottom of your butter bowl, until your sauce thickens. (it's the butter that thickens the sauce). Remember the sauce will never thicken more than the consistency of the cooked yolks initially, which is why that step is critical for a thick sauce that will sit nicely on top of a Benedict or blanched asparagus.
As the sauce thickens, thin with room temperature lemon juice. You can now add more butter until desired flavor profile is achieved. To season, use Tabasco, it disappears nicely into sauce. Then add a little bit of salt and white pepper, use caution as this sauce is very easy to oversalt.
To poach the eggs
Fill a saucepan with several inches of water. Heat the water on high until it reaches a boil and then lower the heat until the water is at a bare simmer (just a few bubbles coming up now and then).
Working with the eggs one at a time, crack the egg into a small bowl or cup. Place the bowl close to the surface of the hot water and gently slip the egg into the water.
If you want, use a spoon to push some of the egg whites closer to their yolks, to help them hold together. Add all of the eggs you are poaching to the pan in the same way, keeping some distance between them.
Remove from heat and cover the pan. Set a timer for 4 minutes. At this point the egg whites should be completely cooked, while the egg yolks are still runny.
Note that the timing depends on the size of the eggs, the number of eggs in the pot, and if you are cooking at altitude, so adjust accordingly. If you are at altitude, want firmer egg yolks, or are poaching more than 4 eggs at once, you may need to cook them longer. If you try 4 minutes and the eggs are too cooked, reduce the time.
Gently lift the poached eggs out of the pan with a slotted spoon and place on a plate to serve.
Chef Michael Gagne’s Hollandaise Tips
To make it easier on yourself make a lot of Hollandaise, perhaps even make 1.5 times this recipe, more than you think you'll need. It's harder with one or two yolks than with 8, as the smaller amount cooks so fast.
When adding butterfat, if the sauce looks thick, shiny and waxy, and begins to slide off sides of the bowl, it has too much butter. Go deep to get the water and milk solids from the bottom of the melted butter, and add a little at a time until sauce thins.
Hollandaise should not taste like only one of its ingredients, eggs, butter or lemon. It should taste like eggbutterlemon.
How do you fix a broken Hollandaise sauce? Sauce will break for two reasons, you exceed the ratio of egg yolks to butter, or the sauce becomes cold, and changes structure, then melts like butter when served. The procedure for bringing it back is the same. Warm broken sauce to about 100 degrees on top of your steaming pot, should feel slightly warm to touch. In a separate metal bowl, whisk one egg yolk with a little water, whisk as described above. Then gradually reincorporate into broken sauce. Pay careful attention to thickness, use the milk solids from the bottom of your butter bowl to adjust.