E - Eggs Benedict
An egg is culinary perfection. The protein content of a small chicken in a natural packaging. A perfect emulsifying agent in mayonnaises, a thickener in custards and sauces. Redolent, when flanked by soldiers, of the nursery yet capable of the sophistication of soufflé or omelette Arnold Bennet.
Perhaps it is because the egg is so perfect, particularly at breakfast, that cocking it up makes me so angry. People who claim they ‘can’t boil an egg’ frustrate me, people who overcook scrambled eggs make me very ill-tempered but anyone who screws up eggs Benedict can set me into a fulminating, incoherent rage.
Why is it that every restaurant, diner, gastropub or hotel feels the need to mess about with eggs B? It is very simple.
An egg is lightly poached. Its yolk must remain runny. No, it’s not going to give me salmonella. It’s not the rawness of the yolk that’s the problem anyway, it’s the fact that you’re buying cheap eggs from mutant chickens and your kitchen is grubbier than Scutari hospital during an orderlies’ strike. Just poach the bloody egg and I promise not to sue your crummy restaurant.
Take some bacon and fry it. Not ham, be it Parma, Westphalian, country or merely a wet slab of reconstituted pig parts. Just bacon. Neither, indeed, smoked salmon, spinach, haddock or Christ help me, cheese. (Repeat after me…Arse – Elbow… Shit – Shinola… Benedict – McMuffin).
Place on a toasted English muffin. Not a ‘round of brioche’, not a scone, not a ‘Country Biscuit, not a disc of granary toast because it’s first thing in the morning and the commis is still in bed and you haven’t broken open the bakery order yet. You said you could do it - it’s on the bloody menu. Just do it and stop mucking about.
Finally top with Hollandaise. The easiest sauce in the book. Your most knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, haliotosis-ridden, lips-move-when-he-reads KP could knock it out in the gaps between emptying the swill bins and you can keep it on the steam table for a week. I don’t care. Just don’t ‘scent it with orange’, strew it with chervil or let it get a skin before it hits the table.
See. That wasn’t difficult at all. Was it?