To make the waste of a morning a little more bearable I offered to make breakfast. Louise just wanted poached eggs on toast but as you will come to learn that is a little to basic for me. I reached for my old French cook book and reminded myself of the method for cooking Hollandaise sauce which is actually very simple.
This is what you need;
The juice of half a lemon;
1 teaspoon of water;
2 egg yolks;
4 oz of butter; and
salt and pepper to taste.
This is the basic method. Bring a sauce pan of water to the boil and leave it simmering. Take a bowl and sit it on top of the sauce pan making sure that the bowl does not make contact with the water.
Add the lemon juice and water. (At this point it is necessary to insert a parenthesis. The lemon juice is what gives the sauce its kick and actually half a lemon, especially if the lemon is large, will give the sauce a strong flavour. I would therefore suggest that you try out making the sauce and establishing how strong you prefer it before serving it to others. I suppose really this statement is obvious and need not have been included. If you agree, just ignore this part. In fact, now I come to think of it, you should just not bother reading the parenthesis but then again by now I guess you already have.)
To the lemon juice and water add the two egg yolks and 1oz of butter. Whisk the mixture until the butter is melted and the sauce starts to become thick. You should leave a noticeable trail with the whisk. At this point take the sauce pan off the heat but leave the bowl with the mixture in on top. Gradually add the remaining butter to the sauce whisking all the time. Then salt and pepper to taste and you should have a thick yellow sauce.
All you now need to do is pour it over the chosen dish and serve. In my case it was the aforementioned poached eggs on toast.
I have to admit that this mornings effort did contain a little to much lemon juice and contained quite a tangy kick. Still, you live, you learn, you get food poisoning.
'til next time. Steve
