If I say “poached eggs”? What do you think of? Go! No, not that! Now keep your mind on the food! Eggs Benedict is the correct answer. So EVERYONE knows that Eggs Benedict is poached eggs and Canadian bacon (closer to ham than American bacon) on a English muffin, SMOTHERED in Hellandaise, oops! HOLLANDAISE. So, our next key learning is Hollandaise, which has defeated many a cook. Hollandaise is an emulsion made from an acid reduction, eggs and fat and uses the same technique as many other classic sauces: Bearnaise, Maltaise, Choron, etc. So this is something we all better perfect.
Reduce vinegar, wine and peppercorns. Cool and strain. Add egg yolks and cook over barely simmering water, whisking until tripled in volume. Slowly add the butter, whisking until thick. Simple, right? Wrong. Eggs can scramble, the sauce can break down and holding it is very tricky. The chef-instructor makes it by feel, no measuring-everything is off the number of egg yolks. He purposely breaks the sauce, so he can show us how to recover it-tricky in itself. Now we make our own. It is really not that hard, if you understand the principles and the danger points. Most of us do fine, but for some it’s ugly. Improperly prepared or held Hollandaise looks like hell-Hellandaise-stirred eggs floating in a bath of grease. We try recovery. Damn, it works! I think that failure in this instance is where the real learning occurs. And that is why I am here. If I don’t understand how the food chemistry works, I can never understand how to fix a problem. Today was very cool.
Factoid: to fix a broken hollandaise, whisk an egg yolk over simmering water, until tripled in volume, then slowly whisk the broken hollandaise into the new egg yolk.
