Everything in this photo has a blueish tint to it from the patio umbrella on the deck.
I woke up Sunday morning feeling creative, something I hadn’t felt for a long time. I wanted to make something with leftover asparagus in the fridge.
I knew exactly what I was going to make…Poached eggs over chopped asparagus and bacon topped with hollandaise sauce and chopped tarragon.
It’s not every morning, especially for the last few months, that I spring out of bed to make one of the French mother sauces.
Hollandaise sauce isn’t something for timid cooks; it takes a little practice. I’ve mastered it and don’t think twice when I want to make it anymore.
Hollandaise sauce is very rich and is made with egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, salt & pepper. I make a tiny batch since it’s just the two of us.
Today, I added a pinch of curry powder to the hollandaise sauce, which gave it a little more flavor and color.
We try to stick to the idea that the key to healthy eating is having everything in moderation. We had a small amount of hollandaise sauce spooned over our poached eggs.
Speaking of poached eggs, I love them. They are a bit of a pain in the ass to make, so I don’t make them often. Poached eggs took me a long time to master. I usually make soft-boiled eggs when I don’t feel like making fussy food.
For the rare times, we eat breakfast out, I order poached eggs. I can practically hear the breakfast cook saying, “Oh, Fuck! What asshole ordered the poached eggs?”
It slows things down in a busy small kitchen, unlike large brunch establishments that pre-make large amounts of poached eggs and gently reheat them when ordered.
I saw on a tv show that Bobby Flay spent two summers working at a hotel restaurant, and all he did was pre-cook poached eggs. Poached eggs aren’t the easiest suckers to pull off, either.
First, there must be vinegar in the water. Next, each egg should be carefully broken into its dish. No, you can’t do it the lazy way of breaking the eggs directly into the water; you can if you want broken yolks.
When the water comes to a simmer, you whirl the water with a slotted spoon around like a cyclone and carefully pour each egg cup into the water. Then you hold your breath and pray.
The vinegar in the water helps the egg whites stay together with the egg, but there will usually be some stringy egg whites floating around, which happened on Sunday morning.
When I pulled them out of the boiling water after they floated, I always dab the eggs on a towel with a slotted spoon, then carefully get rid of the strings before plating.
Do you have to do this? Hell no, if you don’t care what they look like. However, I am a perfectionist cook in the kitchen and simply have to.
See how poached eggs are a pain ass? Swears are floating around the universe from cooks worldwide cursing their asses off when an egg breaks in the water, and there are still plenty from me while I was learning sunny side up and over easy eggs.
Eggs are hard to perfect. Did you know many chefs on employment interviews have to make eggs because it shows what kind of chef they are?
Just before I pulled the eggs out of the water, I had a perfect hollandaise sauce until I forgot about it for a few seconds while I was plating, and my damn sauce broke. I think I only said quietly shit, shit, shit.
Instead of totally freaking out and throwing the whole thing away like I used to, I fixed it. Since I learned that kitchen hack, it has saved many kinds of sauces. I’ve learned to tame my temper over the years when things like this happen and pivot to fix it.
To fix a broken sauce, you add a little bit of hot water and whisk the hell out of it until the sauce comes back together.
The sauce came back together but was thin. I didn’t have time to cook it further since I had perfectly cooked poached eggs that were getting cold; I plated the sauce as it was.
As Julia Child said, never apologize for a dish you messed up. Marty didn’t notice the hollandaise was on the thin side, or he would have told me. 😂
All that aside, I whipped up a delicious Sunday morning breakfast served with a multigrain gluten-free multigrain toast to dip in the yolks and sauce. I love dippy eggs! Everything is a weird color in the photo from the patio umbrella. Note to self.
I can tell I am starting not to feel as depressed as I have been since January. I started making cooking videos for our spätzle page and my Julzie Style one on Instagram. I am getting better at it.
I finally figured out how to video with a tripod to make demo videos. I added music and effects to the kinds of reels like I see on Instagram. I did a slow-motion reel and a cooking demo with a voice-over, I was scared to do the voice-over with my deep Jersey voice, but it came out pretty good.
This year I have had no interest in doing anything like that for our Instagram pages; now, I am a reel-making maniac! You can check out the reels on Instagram @vtspatzle or @julziestyle or The Vermont Spätzle Company on Facebook.
Please share a post you like or tell a friend who may like my writing style, never knowing what I’ll post next. Hell, I don’t have a clue until I sit in front of the keyboard on my laptop most days. Thanks, guys! 😊