Foodie Friday: Eggs Benedict

Brunch around Portland can be a big deal, like plan your weekend around it big deal. My personal go to item to judge a brunch place on, is Eggs Benedict. It is over the top rich, so it feels like a treat when eating out, it's difficult to make, so it feels a bit risky when ordering it and it typically has meat in it, so it is interesting to see what kind of vegetarian alternatives are paired with the recipe. My favorite place for Eggs Benedict in Portland is currently the Country Cat. They make it with an extra lemony sweetness to the dish that makes me swoon.

While Portlanders love flocking to restaurants on the weekend for bite to eat, staying in and whipping up your own concoction can be just as entertaining and tasty. This past weekend I tackled none other than my favorite breakfast dish.

I started with making homemade English Muffins, because really, if I going to do this, I might as well really do this. This was my first time making English Muffins and it will not be my last. They are seriously one of the easiest baked goods I have ever made. I used the recipe from Tasty Kitchen and it is as simple as Georgia presents it to be. I was surprised to see just how many English Muffins I made, 30 in total! They ended up being a little smaller than I was expecting, but were a great snack with jam or nutella all weekend long. If I were to make them again I think I would experiment with making them larger. Sunday morning I made breakfast eggs sandwiches with the English Muffins and they were tasty, but more like mini breakfast sandwiches.

Once I finished baking I moved on to the sauce. I checked out a few recipes before starting as honestly the process of making Hollandaise Sauce intimidated me. I decided to go with what I hoped would be a tried and true source, eggsbenedictrecipe.org, a site devoted an entirely to teaching people to master this recipe.

Here is where I think I would change what I did for next time. I decide to first make the sauce as I was worried the most about it. Even though there was a very helpful video about poaching eggs (also something I had never done before) explaining that you can poach the eggs, put them in cold water and then back in warm water when ready to serve. This is what I should have done, poached the eggs, let it set in cold water and made the sauce.

Instead, I made the sauce and it looked beautiful! Then I started in on making the eggs and turned my back on that sauce for what felt like a moment and it congealed a bit and I never did get the sauce back to its lovely creamy look. It tasted good, but not as good and I had an annoying internal debate about re-making the entire sauce to get it "just right" versus the fact that I just should not waste food. Not wasting food won out and my pictures and taste buds suffered slightly for it, all in all the right decision, that's what next times are for.

Instead of the traditional ham, I decided on the simple, but yummy slice of tomato and avocado. Oh, a side of roasted potatoes.

~Jess