Puttin' on the Ritz!

Madame likes to start her morning with a strong cup of tea and breakfast in the sun room. Her eggs are prepared to perfection, standing on top a coral base, with the buttercup yellow sauce lovingly sprinkled on top.

But, back to reality, madame doesn't have a cohort of servants seeing to her every need. The only person close to being her 'servant', though he strongly objects to doing any manual labor of any kind, is off at an early-morning gig at the pool. So, the madame must tend to herself, and see to her own breakfast. For you see, the madame is me!

107. Eggs Royale - *Toast*

The combination of poached eggs on top smoked salmon with a hollandaise sauce is a classic one - but it really isn't anything I have myself eaten. If it had been served at the hotels I stayed in in my life, I probably slept right through it, or would have brushed it off as being too euro-trashy to bother with.

Ah, how times have changed! Well truth to be told, I have no choice but to make the Eggs Royale, because they are in CL, and I really don't have any objection to eggs, smoked salmon, and a sauce made with copious amounts of butter!

So, madame got up not too late this morning and went out searching for smoked salmon. You'd think that living in Lox-ville, it would be easy to find! After hitting dead ends at two stores, she finally decided to go to a small Russian deli. She purchased the smoked salmon, at a steep price, and understood why the title of the recipe included the word 'Royale'.

Coming home, she realized she had forgotten to buy the required lemon for the sauce. Luckily, servant #1 was willing to pick one up on his way home, but his benevolance came at a price - madame had agreed to make him his 'lemony cookies' later on. The things one does to keep her servants satisfied!

When servant #1 finally arrived at the quarters, madame set off to make for the first time not only the hollandaise sauce, but also the poached eggs!

According to Mr. Tom N-D, she would start on the sauce first. (Ok enough of this third-person; I'm getting a headache!)

Well, the sauce was a BITCH to make. I followed directions carefully. I whisked together three egg yolks, some vinegar and lemon juice till pale.


Then, in a small pan, I melted a stick and a tablepoon of butter (!!!) until fizzy and sorta clarified.


The hot butter was then to go into the egg mixture slowly while whisking away. I don't know at which point this was supposed to become thick, but it didn't. And I don't know why. I started freaking out and put the mixture in a small pan and slowly starting heating it and whisking the mixture. Nothing was happening! So I raised up the heat full blast; when it looked like I would have scrambled eggs, I quickly switched off the heat, put the mixture back into the bowl, and start whisking like mad!! And it became thick - wooohoooo!


I seasoned the sauce with some salt and pepper and left it covered on the hob.

Then I started making the eggs! Never ever poached eggs before so was a bit worried! I boiled up some water with salt and vinegar; then I let it simmer and created a sort of vortex in the water by stirring with a wooden spoon. As soon as I would want to add my egg, the vortex would disappear, so I had to call on servant#1 to help me. He was really crap at stirring; it is so hard to find good help these days, but I had no choice. Well the water was sort of vortex-y and I dumped in the broken egg. It sunk to the bottom of the pot, and I hoped it would still become some version of a poached egg.

Well it all turned out to be fine! I put the egg on top a piece of bread with some smoked salmon, and then I drizzled on the sauce.

The egg was a great texture - just set but not overally so. The sauce was a lot punchier than I expected - durr! it has lemon in it! The smoked salmon and bread were of course fabulous. So a pretty good dish! I am not sure if I would bother making it again though, as it seemed to be a lot of stuff happening at once, and I am not sure I am comfortable eating a sauce with three egg yolks in it and a stick and a tablepoon of butter!


But a nice upmarket type of breakfast - and I'm glad I made it!! And now I could say I could make hollandaise sauce, sort of, and poached eggs! What a clever madame I am!