Eggs Florentine

Mmm, I love Eggs Florentine. There is just something very lovely about the meeting of spinach and hollandaise sauce, warm yolk on crisp English muffins. It is definitely one of my favorite things to order when I'm out to brunch, since it falls distinctly in that category of "things I don't make for myself."

But...I'm always up for a food challenge! This is automatically a difficult one since it involves fancy things like poached eggs and a sauce that is notoriously difficult to master. But my friend Tom got us this rad egg poaching pan for a wedding present, and I've been dying to try it out. It has four little cups for eggs and works like a double boiler. Fun!

I decided if there was anyone who had a simplified, hard-to-fuck-up hollandaise sauce recipe, it would be Alton Brown. And ta-da! I printed it out and set to work. I was most nervous about the sauce and eggs, so I got the spinach cooking first. I chopped up a bunch of fresh spinach,

and sauteed this in olive oil with some chopped up onion and sea salt. I also got some potatoes going, because what's brunch without potatoes? I cooked them a bit in the microwave to soften them, then tossed them in a frying pan with onions, butter, and seasonings.

Finally, I got to work on the sauce. Here is Alton's recipe, which I cut in half, since there were only two of us eating these eggs:

3 egg yolks
1 teapsoon water
1/4 teaspoon sugar
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Pour 1-inch of water into a large saucepan; over medium heat, bring to a simmer. Once simmering, reduce the heat to low.

Place egg yolks and 1 teaspoon water in a medium mixing bowl and whisk until mixture lightens in color, approximately 1 to 2 minutes. Add the sugar and whisk for another 30 seconds.

Place the mixture over the simmering water and whisk constantly for 3 to 5 minutes, or until there is a clear line that is drawn in the mixture when you pull your whisk through, or the mixture coats the back of a spoon.

Remove the bowl from over the pan and gradually add the butter, 1 piece at a time, and whisk until all of the butter is incorporated. Place the bowl back over the simmering water occasionally so that it will be warm enough the melt the butter. Add the salt, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper. Serve immediately or hold in a thermos to keep warm.

You see that "serve immediately" phrase? Yeah, that came back to bite me in the ass. But at first, everything was easy peasy. I used a double boiler that I got from Willow as part of a Chocolate Factory she gave us for Christmas one year.

Eggs: good.

Butter: good.

Whisking: good!

Everything was coming together in a very hollandaisey way. I whisked the last of the butter in there and it was looking positively professional. But by this time, I realized I should have put the eggs up already. Oops. Got them started.

The little pan worked great. Oops, I forgot to start the English muffins. And the spinach and potatoes needed reheating. Shitballs. Okay, I'm in control.

After "put in a thermos," something I did not do, Alton didn't offer any other ways to maintain the hollandaise for several minutes while your eggs poach and your muffins toast. I kept it over the warm water and whisked it every once in awhile. Somewhere around realizing the eggs were poached and the English muffins were almost burning, the sauce just gave up on me. I tried all the culinary CPR I knew, but even I could tell the efforts were going nowhere fast. In the time period of approximately five minutes, my beautiful golden sauce went from a creamy liquid to this:

I know, disgusting. Even though I knew this was a tricky food and it was my very first attempt ever at making it, I felt like a fat loser for screwing it up. Especially since I had it at one point! Remember that? Anyway, the eggs were a little too done, making the moisture factor pretty low overall for the dish, but the end result was pretty tasty anyway.