Happy New Year

Here it is, a brand new year! And, New Years Day means the local diner is closed which means B doesn't get to purchase their Eggs Benedict, better known to us as a bennie. Lynn to the rescue.

I figured, how hard is it to make a bennie? Eggs, sauce, muffin and Canadian bacon. Of course, I've never poached an egg before but that makes this a good learning experience. I had all the ingredients having decided last week to do this. I don't normally have Canadian bacon so that was the only purchase needed. I did go on the Internet to find a recipe because I was not sure of the timing. I also tweaked it a bit. I have found that preparation of any recipe old or new is easier if you have ALL the needed ingredients ready to go. So, first I got the pans out and decided to use the induction hot plate for the cheese sauce as it immediately drops the temperature so much better than my electric stove. Muffins defrosted and in the toaster, bacon laid out in the pan, water with vinegar on for a simmer and eggs, milk, cheese, flour and mustard out with butter in the pan. Cracked the 4 eggs into 4 small saucers since from what I remember seeing on cooking demonstrations, you slide the eggs into the simmering water. All set to go....wait, the water doesn't look deep enough! So, I added some water and then, of course, had to wait for it to boil to be turned down to a simmer. As I waited, I made the cheese sauce and after tasting, added more cheese. That was turned to low as the water simmered I heated the bacon and slipped the eggs into the water. Now I expected this to look kinda icky and had seen chefs swirl the water to keep all the egg together. That didn't work. So I was seeing 4 globs of egg with all this white stuff floating around and was concerned most of the egg white was floating not staying with the yolk. Well, moved on to toasting the muffins, making sure the sauce was hot enough, and also the bacon. At 3 1/2 minutes I turned the eggs off and started dishing up. Using a strainer spoon, I scooped up the egg and YES, there was quite a bit of white. Plopped it on the muffin with ham and added the cheese sauce. Quite pretty and when the second plate was done, we ate. Naturally no pictures first time around. But it did look really nice. One egg was a bit runny the others were soft cooked. I'd cook them 3 minutes next time and try to take them out in the order I put them in - first in first out. I told B this didn't mean we would stop eating at the diner on Sundays! But, it was a fun learning experience and one I will repeat.
Hope your New Years is happy and healthy!