Wow this place is dead this weekend. Where is everyone? I know Tina said she was headed out of town. So where does that leave everyone else? I am not so busy this weekend, just relaxing for the most part. We finally got our new couches only to learn that the wharehouse is out of them and so we have to wait until mid April to get them. But at least we got them, so thats good for me. Guess I will be getting couches for my birthday.
Anyways, I am about to get ready to head out for church. Won't have much to do today except getting ready for the week.
We spent the day yesterday shopping and buying plumbing stuff and the limestone slab for the bathroom counter since the granite I'd chosen was not available. I like the limestone better anyway.
Mike was supposed to come for brunch and I was making him Eggs Benedict, hollandaise and all, but he's sick with flu, so that's off. He might come later if he feels better after a shower and we'll pick him up from his apartment instead of at the subway station at this end. (We live in the west end of the city. Mike is directly in the middle of town at the main university campus, ten subway stops east of us.)
KaeEll, Eggs Benedict are a favorite around here, and my kids have loved them since they were little.
I have a variation that you might want to try sometime: I use prosciutto instead of Canadian bacon. (No offense to Canadian bacon!) I also have a shortcut way of making hollandaise that works just great, and isn't quite so hard on the nerves or on the feet. I make it in the blender.
If you ever want to give it a try, what you do is to "scramble" your eggs first, but don't thoroughly cook them. In other words, you want them cooked over low heat to the point where they're forming curds, but are still VERY soft. You want them to the stage where, if you were to serve them to someone on a plate, they would say, "These aren't cooked enough!" There's still a little liquid, but not runny liquid... Essentially, what you're doing is bringing the eggs up to a safe temperature, without cooking them to the stage of scrambled eggs, and without all of the issues of separation that the traditional method brings with it.
Put the eggs in the blender, add your salt, melted butter, and lemon juice, and whirl. Put it all back into a pan, and keep warm. I also add just a little dash of cayenne. This hollandaise can be warmed again over very low heat, without panic! This means that it can also be made ahead of time, and reheated.
A year ago for Christmas, my youngest daughter gave me a heavy-duty egg poaching pot, with an insert for holding four cups, and a glass lid. I freaking LOVE it!!! In the past, I had tried other egg poachers, but didn't like any of them. Consequently, I always did it by hand, one egg at a time, in swirling water. If you don't already have something like this pot, and if you do Eggs Benedict fairly frequently, I highly recommend it.
All this talk about Eggs Benedict has made me hungry now!
Here's a link for what I'm talking about on cooking.com, but I know that Bed, Bath, and Beyond has similar pots.
www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=141882
I can poach EIGHT eggs in only a few minutes now (I have the four-egg pot, but you can get them with six cups, I think), keep them in a bowl of hot water while I'm assembling the English muffins and prosciutto, and stirring the reheated hollandaise. I like to put a small swipe of hollandaise directly onto the muffin, add the prosciutto, then I pat the egg dry, sprinkle a bit of salt, and smother it in the hollandaise.
I'm describing this for those of you who may not have ventured yet into the realm of Eggs Benedict, but it's really not intimidating. It's a matter of organization! That's it...
-- Edited by Moore ideas at 11:42, 2008-03-16
__________________
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"
(Dumbledore to Harry Potter)
Moore, I NEED that pot!! I've been poaching eggs in my big pasta pot, 4 at a time, adding a little white vinegar to help keep the whites from flying all over. That pot is exactly the kind I need. And we have Bed Bath and Beyond here too. Will go get one this afternoon!
Okay, here's a dirty little secret re Hollandaise - Knorr Swiss packages of the stuff. It's amazingly good! It's still a bit of trouble, all that stirring, but much less fuss than from scratch. I never would have guessed until one day my friend, Marilyn, the one currently on that Waltzing Mathilda tour down under, brought some over to put on asparagus. I assumed she had made it all herself, and after we'd eaten, she announced that she had used a package!. I swear, I could not tell the difference!
Moore, love prosciutto. Great idea. I use pea meal bacon, which is what I'm assuming you call Canadian bacon, non? It's extremely lean and yummy.
I'm going to pry hub away from his Sunday political shows on CNN (ugh) and go get Mike. The sun is out!
KaeEll, I used to use the Knorr, and I agree with you that it's absolutely acceptable! A great shortcut. However, once I learned this blender technique, I abandoned the Knorr because the blender was just as easy.
The proscuitto is nicely delicate, easier to cut than the Canadian bacon (I'm not familiar with pea meal bacon, so I don't know if they're the same), and adds just a bit of salt to the underside of the egg. What we call Canadian bacon around these parts is a round thick-cut slice of "bacon" that looks more like ham than bacon.
GO IMMEDIATELY TO BED, BATH, AND BEYOND AND GET YOURSELF ONE OF THOSE POTS!
Been there, done that with the pot of water, and vinegar mix. It works, but it takes an hour to poach enough eggs to feed a hungry family...
__________________
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"
(Dumbledore to Harry Potter)
Oh you guys I can't wait till I have lost enough weight to be able to eat eggs benedict. I don't make them because I am the only one who eats them. Made them once for a class I took a year or two ago. They are oh so yummy. A restaurant real close to here makes them really good.
Back home now after a HUGE lunch out with Mike. We took him to his favourite part of town, where he and his brothers grew up, and where he lived for a time while he was married. It was so congested! People are all so tired of being cooped up, a sunny Sunday had everyone out walking, shopping, and eating in the glorious rays. Then we drove him back to his concrete jungle of high rise condos and impossible traffic. I think he's finally come to terms with hating the deadness of life smack in the middle of town. Not a tree in sight, not a bird to be heard. just horns and masses of bodies swarming across intersections, grid locks, homeless souls trying to sleep on the sidewalks, beggars....ack. I couldn't do it!
Moore, I didn't make it to BB&By yet, but I'll head out this week, for sure. I promised Mike some Eggs Benedict Easter weekend, since today's plans fizzled.
Upside to pigging out at 3 p.m. - no cooking dinner tonight! We're too stuffed to even think about food!
Hi all! It was quite the dreary, snowy day here. HMMPH. After such a sunny yesterday! Jackson and I have been playing our new game on the Wii today. Woo so much fun!
I'm afraid I can't join in on the eggs benedict love. I can't stomach it. Blech. But you all talking about food just makes me hungry!
JoJo!!! I may have to go lie down... Eggs. Butter. Lemon. Prosciutto. English muffins. What's not to love???
KaeEll, I don't think that I could function without the sound of birds first thing in the morning. It's the most soothing sound in the world. Your son needs to move away from all of the concrete.
Our son came over tonight for some dinner, and to watch HBO's production on John Adams with us. Wonderful...!!!
At our son's request, I made blackened Cajun red fish (red snapper) with chipotle "tartar sauce" (chipotles, mayo, cilantro, chopped scallions, and chopped red onion), lemon rice, and asparagus. It turns out that he is newly out of a job; his boss died in December, and the new boss essentially fired everyone. That's politics, and he knew to expect it! Still, he has a little bit of a grace period, but needs to find something else rather soon. Not a happy task just a handful of months before a new election.
__________________
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"
(Dumbledore to Harry Potter)
Moore, I meant to say this yesterday, but that bacon you described as Canadian I've never seen here. Our bacon is either in the old fashioned rashers or in a slab of pink ham, cured and rolled in peameal, and its shape is oblong. I've got some in the fridge. I'll post a pic for you.
I'm rather relieved to find out that we're not talking about the same stuff because I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of Canadian bacon, although that seems to be what is used in the U. S. for "classic" Eggs Benedict. I far prefer the prosciutto!
I was going to try to return the favor by finding you a decent picture of what I'm talking about, but nothing on the internet looks quite like what's in my local grocery store. However, it's the stuff that you tend to find on McDonald's Egg McMuffins... (Unless they have a different version of that too, up there in the Great Frozen North!)
__________________
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"
(Dumbledore to Harry Potter)
Oh, THAT awful stuff, lol. I don't know what we call that slab of fatty rubbery yick in an egg McMuffin, but it's not what we call bacon. Funny that here we are neighbours and what's marketed here as one thing is an entirely different kettle of fish there. Oh well, lol.
"Yick" is the perfect description for what we call Canadian bacon, in my own opinion! Some people like it, but not me -- and it's not what we call bacon down here either. Notice that we don't even take credit for it, but call it "Canadian" bacon. It's like that naughty, but potty-funny song in "South Park" (if your kids ever watched that) which was "Blame Canada"...
We're so mean to our nice neighbors to the north. First the bacon, and then the song!
That song was hilarious! No one up here took umbrage at it at all. As a matter of fact, I think Canadians "got" it more than it was intended to be "gotten", lol.
