Eggs Benedict

What more can be said about Eggs Benedict that has not already been said. It is, absolutely, the ultimate in breakfasting.

I recall staying for some days with friends in Bill Clinton's favoured Santa Monica hotel. There we perched ourselves at the breakfast bar each morning after a restorative jog towards Muscle Beach, and dined like Kings on eggs benedict, miniature franks, and egg-white omelettes. Our overdrafts sank by the mouthful. What could be better.

For a Benedict you need a muffin, of course. By that, I mean an English muffin, not a plastic-wrapped greasy cake. How American muffins hit the British consciousness I don't know, but I imagine fewer would be eaten if people knew it took half a quart of engine oil to make each one.

Freshly baked English muffins, on the other hand, are sadly all too rare a sight. So when I spotted some that the Flour Station bakery have resurrected the tradition and offer them at Borough Market, I could not resist. These are the proper deal - a full two inches thick, light and glorious.

To make a Benedict you need more than a muffin, of course. Everything has to be perfect - you can't throw any old thing in there. So I picked up some ham in Salvino's and the freshest, organicest eggs I could, "cyder" vinegar, various flavours for the reduction, and set to.


Hollandaise sauce is easy, if you have patience and talent. Both of which I have in droves, of course.

Lemon juice is for weaklings, you should start with a proper vinegar reduction - shallots, celery leaf, bay, peppercorns and mace flavoured mine. Gary Rhodes would suggest cardamom and star anise, which I shall try next time. The longer you spend beating while you add the butter the better - a Hollandaise shouldn't drip, it should stand a spoon or two. Mine was beat for half an hour or so - perhaps more, as my friend was late for brunch - and acquired an airy, bubbly lightness that belied the full pound of butter at its heart.


So to poaching. I must confess, I struggle to poach. I've tried vortexes, vinegar, deep water, shallow water, still water and rolling boils. Hot eggs, cold eggs, small, large. This time I went for broke with half a bottle of vinegar, a good almost-roll, and the freshest eggs I could muster, and finally managed something close to the Gary Rhodes walnut whip. On a couple of them, at least. Success at last!


And, yeah, here it is. Toasted muffins drenched in butter, warmed smoked ham, the eggs, the sauce, and a sprinkling of wild garlic (I had to do something with it).



Nothing could beat this on a Saturday morning. Nothing, at least, on a plate.

Turning over a new leaf

Forgive me, dear reader, if I wax somewhat self-indulgent today. For thanks to the glorious weather I have been taken by the joys of spring.

For me, spring is announced by the full sprouting of the Mandrake. A plant both rare and magical - on whim, it may be mysterious, lethal, shielding or full of spite. Woe betide the fool who dares to drag it from its soil, for they may hear it scream, and that will kill them. I am not joking!



My Mandrake keeps to a schedule unlike any other - its leaves are the first to arrive, it blooms, fitfully, while there are no insects to sup of its juice, and it will be gone to ground long before the Solstice knocks. It has never borne fruit, though that, perhaps, is due to the lack of a suitable mate.

Many years ago, as a student, I purchased some dried Mandrake root from a crusty in the sadly long departed Kensington Market. This I steeped with alcohol to make a tincture, which I drank one afternoon, while sitting in the sun in the middle of the campus. It was deeply bitter. To this day, I cannot quite explain my motivation.

I used to have the Mandrake's distant sister, Henbane, which - being annual - did not last out the year. Strangely beautiful and yet vile at heart, it will kill you so much as look at you. I bottled up some of the flowers, in vodka, just in case. I still have that liquid on my shelf.

So, to Spring, and while a hearty chunk of deer bone simmered into stock (this I purchased from a monomaniac Venison vendor at Borough Market), I decided it was time to turn over what little soil I have to food. Being somewhat haphazard in my planting I accidentally pulled out a few items I had shoved in previously - sprouting remains of dinner, mostly. And then showered the earth with - onion seeds, strange ball-head carrot seeds, various greens, and whatnot. Who knows whether they will sprout. Probably - in my experience, it is much more difficult to stop a plant from growing than to let it grow.

So I may be in for a feast.

Of course, the snails will love it. They always do. But if they're not careful, I'll eat them.