Foodiva's Kitchen: Eggs Benedict

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Eggs Benedict


When I woke up this morning, I had every intention to go for a run, but (yes, it's that hard, there's always a 'but') I woke up hungry and it's a rather bad state to be if you are me. Once I'm down in the kitchen and everyone else living here is either at school or at work.... I get my camera out and start photo-cuisining, or whatever it's called! It's cheaper than therapy, or having coffee with friends.

So, exercise thoughts abandoned, I proceeded to indulge in my craving for eggs benedict for breakfast. A hearty and evil meal which in all fairness, I only eat probably once or twice in a moon. Hey, why am I explaining myself here?? I have every right to eat evil eggs benedict whenever I want to, thank you conscience and Mr. Cardiologist Dr, Sir.

I decided to omit the meat part of it because I didn't fancy that (besides, there were no sliced meat or halal "ham" in the house, anyway). I substituted that with hashed potatoes though, delicately made with these beautiful, unmanicured hands.

Grated potatoes

Squeezed potatoes in between two tea strainers to make a little nest, before plunging the whole thing in hot, boiling oil. This keeps the potatoes intact instead of floating around and making you look stupid helpless.


My eggs were poached in water, hence the bubbles at the sides

Next up, homemade mini-pancakes instead of boring, old toast.
Yeah, why not go ALL the way?

Finally, improvised "Hollandaise sauce" using creme fraiche, freshly squeezed orange juice, milk and some dried italian herbs. Yum-hah!

My final assembled dish.

My saving grace today were the luscious yellow kiwi fruit and the red cherry tomatoes (which I dipped quickly in the hot oil until the skin just splits). Btw, talking about kiwis, when I went to New Zealand for the first time over 10 years ago, I went to the supermarket looking for the perfect kiwi. NZ is after all, the largest producer and exporter of these hairy fruits in the world. Well, all I saw on display were these really imperfect kiwis - full of lumps and bumps on the outside and they were not even oval! Every shape but, I think.

I asked my Kiwi friend and the explanation for this was that the country exports all the perfect, beautiful, Diva-like kiwis to the rest of the world while the NZlanders have to be content with the ugly ones (unless they travel overseas and buy some, of course). That said, the fugly kiwis tasted the same inside and may I say in all sincerity, they tasted fresher and juicier because they had probably just been picked from the farm too.

Anyways, my first cut into the egg benedict made the dish O-O-Z-E like so....

"Quod me nutrit me destruit"
(what nourishes me, destroys me)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I love eggs ben! with salmon, please.
So when am I coming over for breakfast?

Unknown said...

Come over anytime, and oh, bring the salmon along. You're expensive, I like you already!

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