European · Breakfast · From the menu Media Mañana
Eggs benedict, smoked salmon, pancetta or spinach
Huevos benedictinos, salmón, panceta o espinacas
Muffins, poached eggs and a hollandaise made by hand over water, with three toppings so nobody at the table is left out. The dish the brunch menu was built around.
I had the butter far too high. Across the published hollandaises the butter runs between about twenty-eight and seventy-five grams per yolk, and I was up at the top of that. Fifty grams a yolk sits near the middle and is still thick enough to sit on a muffin without running off it. The one temperature anybody publishes is sixty to seventy-four degrees for the finished sauce, and the one holding time anybody publishes is thirty minutes over warm water. There is no published holding temperature at all, so do not build a service sheet around one.
Ingredients
- 6 English muffins, split
- 12 very fresh eggs for poaching
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar for the water
- For the hollandaise: 3 egg yolks, 150 g butter, melted and warm, 2 tsp lemon juice, ½ tbsp white wine vinegar, cayenne, salt
- 300 g smoked salmon
- 12 slices pancetta or streaky bacon
- 400 g spinach and a knob of butter
- Chives
Method
- Make the hollandaise first, not last. Set a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water without letting it touch. Whisk the yolks with the vinegar and lemon until pale and doubled, about three minutes; the whisk should leave a trail.
- Add the warm melted butter slowly, whisking without stopping, until thick and glossy. It wants to finish between 71 and 74 °C. Season with salt and a small pinch of cayenne.
- Hold it over the pan of warm water, covered, for up to thirty minutes. Off the direct heat, never on it.
- Grill the pancetta until crisp. Wilt the spinach in butter, then squeeze it hard and dry; wet spinach ruins the muffin underneath.
- Toast the muffin halves and butter them.
- Bring a wide pan of water to the boil with the vinegar, take it off the heat and cover it. Slide the eggs in and poach three to four minutes.
- Build fast: muffin, topping, drained egg, a generous spoon of hollandaise, chives. Serve immediately, all plates at once.
Serve it with. The avocado and poached egg, and a jug of something cold.