Fast Eggs Benedict -- Sort Of

Eggs Benedict - Using Oeufs Mollets

Breakfast again! Since the previous version of hollandaise sauce and Eggs Benedict had turned out so well, I decided to try making it again using Julia's alternative and "faster" methods. The plan was to have breakfast ready for three of us at 9:00am and I was serving it at 9:00am so that was a big surprise to everyone! This time the hollandaise sauce was made using a blender, instead of beating the egg yolks by hand, and I tried making Oeufs Mollets (a version of soft boiled eggs) which Julia said can be used as a substitute for poached eggs.

Everything pretty much worked out but I must say that hollandaise sauce made by hand definitely has a much higher yummy factor. I did a lot of head scratching and rereading of Julia's cookbook before making this because it seemed too simple but she was right, even an eight-year-old make hollandaise successfully using the blender.

The process was pretty straightforward -- three egg yolks directly into the blender together with one or two tablespoons of lemon juice plus some salt and pepper. It was blended on the highest setting for only about two seconds and then four talespoons of melted butter was slowly poured in with the blender still on high. Julia warned that you may need to protect yourself using a towel over the open blender but I was lucky -- our blender has a little access cap that can be removed fromt he lid. A couple drops of butter did jup out and landed on my "Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook but now it looks like it really has been used -- I have the proof on the page! This whole process took only about a minute and seemed to go so fast that I thought it hadn't worked until I poured it out -- and it was a hollandaise sauce.

An interesting egg yolk lesson here. Using the blender only allows about half as much butter to be blended into the eggs (four tablespoons for the three yolks I used).. Julia warned that using more will cause the sauce to become too thick and it won't pour out of the blender. I think she was right, the sauce was actually pretty thick and needed to be coaxed out using a rubber spatula. Needing more sauce I following the second half of Julia's wise instructions and poured the blended sauce into a bowl and then beat in an additional four tablespoons of melted butter (drop by drop). The extra butter increased the volume of sauce to provide enough for the six eggs benedicts I was preparing. Julia says that a maximum of three tablespoons of butter can be used for each egg yolk -- if more is used the egg yolks can't absorb the butter and it will curdle. I can vouch for that! One of my earliest attempts at making hollandaise sauce was progressing wonderfully as I beat in my melted butter. All of a sudden I apparently got to that magic point and the sauce instantly turned into a mess of curdled eggs in a bowl of liquid butter. Try it, it is an interesting experience you'll never forget (and won't eat).

Julia did warn that by gaining speed in the process I would also loose some quality of sauce. The three of us who ate this all agreed that although the sauce was tasty it certainly wasn't as rich and scrumptious as the "old fashioned" way I made it before. That's pretty funny -- "old fashioned" -- like I've been making it that way for a couple of decades.

To further speed up the process I thought I'd try making the eggs as "Oeufs Mollets" which is translated by Julia as "Six-minute Boiled Eggs." Do any of you speak French? What does the name really mean? I'm doubting that "six-minute" is part of it but one of my unofficial rules is that I'm not going to Google for a translation!

Julia said to add an extra minute to the eggs if they were chilled. Having taken them out of the refrigerator (and not directly out of a chicken) I boiled them for seven minutes. Although the eggs were quite tasty, next time I'll use six minutes so that the yolks will be a bit more runny. Having used poached eggs in the past, we all laughed a bit at the appearance of the eggs benedict when it was served because the egg was hard enough to retain its shape and looked like a chicken had laid it directly on top of the Canadian bacon. Simple process though -- I poked a pinhole in the large end of the egg (Julia doesn't mention this in the book but she does talk about it in some of her videos), then plopped them all into a pot of boiling water. Some say that the pinhole will keep the egg from cracking, others say it makes it easier to peel the egg, but either way is a win as far as I'm concerned. Six (or seven, in this case) minutes and then the hot water was poured out and cold water run over the eggs to stop the cooking and cool them enough to handle while peeling the shells off.

Again, breakfast was tasty and it was served on time so this was a success overall. I would't hesitate to use these tricks again if short of time since I ended up with eggs benedict instead of boiled oatmeal!! As far as the pan count went, this wasn't too bad either -- One blender, one small saucepan, one large pan for boiling eggs. I kind of felt sorry for all those other pans in the cupboard just dying to come out and play!

There you have it, breakfast on time!

Bon Appetit!!