Welcome to Howard's Stock Pot an interactive, internet cooking site, where each week I will bring you new cooking videos as well as food information and useless trivia.
My name is Howard, but you can call me... well... just call me Howard. I have been cooking for a living for a little over 20 years. I have always had a passion for food; eating it as well as teaching others about it. I have had the great opportunity to work for some outstanding restaurants in almost every capacity there is, be it front of the house or back of the house. My wife and I have had our own restaurant which we designed and built from the ground up and presently I have a specialty catering company.
I have been married for 23 years to a wonderful women named Samantha and we have 3 boys, 1 daughter in-law and a grandson.
I hope you will pick up from the videos how excited I am about sharing what I know about food and the joys and surprises that can come with each bite.
Remember... "It's all about the food!"
Here is the recipe for the Hollindaise sauce. I hope you enjoy it!
Have ready in your blender...
3 Egg yolks
2 Tbs. Lemon juice
Pinch of Cayenne Pepper
1/4 tsp. Salt
Heat to bubbling stage, but do not brown:
2/3 to 1 cup Butter
Cover blender container and turn motor on high. After about 3 seconds remove lid and pour butter over the eggs in a steady stream. By the time the butter is poured in, about 30 seconds, the sauce should be finished.
It's the most wonderful time of the year... It's Christmas time and that means family gatherings, well meaning gifts that you're not entirely sure what your going to do with and food. Food glorious food. Now our family like many of you out there have numerous Christmas traditions; when and where to open your presents, taking a bet on which relative will get blitzen the quickest and the Christmas cuisine. Our family has always done Christmas brunch and for us it has always been Eggs Benedict. Why? Why not. As if the holidays are not stressful enough lets cram 4 or 5 people in a small area and try to coordinate the preparation of Eggs Benedict. For anyone who has worked in a restaurant this is mildly challenging for people who do it for a living, but for people who do it once a year it is truly a holiday sense of humor test. " Is anybody watching the English muffins so they don't burn?" comes the cry from somewhere else while that person fixes another mimosa. "make sure the yolk in my eggs are hard." There is always one in every crowd. But no matter what, we always pull it off; maybe it is all the hot buttered rum and mimosas that make it possible.
For those of you who are not sure what Eggs Benedict is, it is really nothing more than, toasted English muffins, Canadian bacon, poached eggs and Hollindaise Sauce. The key to eggs Benedict are the poached eggs and the Hollindaise sauce.
There are a couple of ways to poach an egg, some people use an egg poaching tray which fits over your skillet filled with water, but I prefer to "float" my eggs. This is simply a matter of filling your skillet ( I use and electric skillet for this) with water and vinegar. The vinegar helps to keep the egg from sticking to the bottom of the skillet. I heat my skillet until it is just about to simmer. I want all of the bubbles to be forming in the bottom of the pan, but not releasing. If you let the water come to a simmer or boil, it will tear up the eggs. Once the water is just the way that I like it, I simply crack the eggs and drop them in. As far as how long to cook the eggs, well... I cook them until the whites of the egg are set and no longer translucent. Traditionally one would want the egg yokes to be runny; this along with the Hollindaise sauce helps to soften the English muffin and creates a wonderfully velvety mouth feel. Once the eggs are where you like them, remove them with a perforated spoon or strainer and place them on top of you English muffin and Canadian bacon.
For the Hollindaise sauce, we are making a blender Hollindaise sauce. Traditional Hollindaise sauce is made in a large metal bowl over simmering water and whisked until the eggs start to thicken. At this point the chef will start to slowly stream the melted butter into the eggs while continually whisking so the eggs don't cook. Then the sauce is flavored with lemon juice or wine. Now this is a nutshell description of how to make traditional Hollindase sauce, there is a fair amount of skill that comes only with practice and wasting lots of eggs. Hollindaise sauce is one of the mother sauces in traditional French cooking, from this sauce there are other sauces that can be made, Bearnaise is the most common after Hollindaise. If you would like detailed instructions on how to make traditional Hollindaise sauce, feel free to e-mail me and I will be happy to send them to you. For our purposes though we will be making a blender Hollindaise sauce, I would not go as far as to call this "No fail" Hollindaise sauce but it is pretty darn close.
Other than the fragile nature of the eggs, the second thing that generally makes Hollindaise difficult is emulsification... that's right, say it with me, e-mul-si-fi-ca-tion. Emulsification is when we get to unlike and usually viscose ingredients to do something that by nature they don't want to do. Oil and vinegar is a common emulsification, where we take the slippery oil and the acidic vinegar and by constant intimidation, beat them into submission and create a vinaigrette. All kidding aside, other than your proportions the most important thing to consider when trying to create any emulsification is-once you start whisking your emulsification you have to continue in the same direction that you have started. If you keep changing directions while you are whisking you will constantly breakdown the bond between the ingredients you are trying to emulsify and basically start over each time you change directions. So, once you start whisking, keep on whisking that same direction. This is what makes the blender Hollindasie work so well. The blender never gets tired or bored with going the same direction, or if it does, it never complains.
I hope you enjoy this episode of Howard's Stock Pot and you will notice that the background noise is a little louder than usual, well- that's the controlled chaos of everyone cooking at the same time. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and may your New Year blessings come true.
