A couple of weeks ago Yadira asked me for a special breakfast. She was joking, but I took it seriously. She asked for "San Jacobos" and Eggs Benedict. Since I had no idea what the first dish was, I decided to try my hand at the second. That was the start of my research.
The mission was deceptively simple: Serve Canadian bacon, poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce on top of an English muffin. Easy? Not.
After figuring out the nature of the needed ingredients I realized that half the stuff couldn't be found locally. Canadian bacon? I didn't even look. There's nothing wrong with good ol bacon from the fridge. English muffins? They were AWOL, so I substituted them with italian buns.
I swear I wanted to do everything from scratch. I was ready to poach some eggs following intrucctions from a You Tube video, but the supermarket gods thought that was a terrible idea. Looking for nothing in particular I found a little miracle gadget that allows those with limited cooking skills to poach eggs on the microwave.This whole thing might seem complicated, but for me it turned out to be easier and quicker than other breakfast dishes.
I will neither give step by step instructions nor post a particular recipe on this post. What I will do is give you some pointers in case you want to prepare your own Eggs Benedict.
1. If you're not familiar with the dish, read about it. A little research can go a long way. I used Wikipedia and You Tube as my main sources of information for this adventure. They might not be proper sources for an academic paper, but they do very well for breakfast.
2. Gather all your ingredients.
Never, ever try to prepare a dish without gathering all the necessary ingredients or the proper substitutes. There's two levels to this process. Before cooking, you must buy or otherwise acquire all the ingredients you will need and at the beginning of the cooking process you should go over your recipe once more and gather all the ingredients you'll be using. Why? That way you won't realize you're missing something halfway through the recipe plus your ingredients will be at room temperature which is the standard for all recipes unless otherwise noted.
3. Use real ingredients. Yes, you can substitute any ingredients for something that's more readily available, but avoid substituting food with pseudo food. Butter is not margarine and lemon flavor has nothing to do with lemon. The taste might be similar, but these thing are beyond unhealthy.4. Don't be afraid. The task at hand might seem daunting, but it isn't. The key is organization. Study all relevant videos and articles before you attempt to prepare any recipe.
Links for Success:
Recipes
Egg Poacher
Hollandaise Video
Poached Eggs Video
