Rachel masters hollandaise sauce, now only poached eggs stand between her and homemade Eggs Benedict!

Okay guys, here is the thing about hollandaise sauce: It’s really, really good. Heavenly. Mind-shattering. When you finish your eggs or asparagus or whatever you’ve prepared it with, you’re going to think, “gosh, that was so incredibly, unbelievably delicious. I want more. I’ll just… I’ll just make some toast to dip in some of my leftover sauce. And maybe some broccoli. Maybe I’ll lick my finger just once.” Don’t listen to that voice! That voice is evil! It wants to hurt you! I had dinner at 5 and am just now starting to feel like a normal person again. With that warning out there I will now tell you how I tackled one of the five French mother sauce recipes. I’m so proud of myself.

I got my hollandaise sauce recipe from the copy of Martha Stewart’s Cooking School that my wonderful mother purchased for me when I was first becoming interested in cooking. So far I’m really happy with this book; it has lots of pictures and explains things in a way that people totally clueless in the kitchen- me- can follow. I have to admit that it felt like a betrayal to use Martha’s recipe instead of Ina’s, but Ina’s recipe is a “blender” hollandaise while Martha’s belongs to the more prestigious bain marie family- which means that you cook it in a double-boiler (or in my case a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water). I’ve never tried making a blender hollandaise sauce and so I have no point of comparison, but I can say in all my years of restaurant Eggs Benedict eating, this is the most wonderful hollandaise sauce I've ever tasted. I honestly didn’t know I was capable of making something so incredible. Though, I suppose anything that is comprised about 75% of butter is pretty likely to be delicious.

So here’s what you do:

Put a medium pot of water on to boil- you’re going to use this for the bain marie and also to scoop out 3 tablespoons of water for the reduction sauce.

Mince a tablespoon of shallots, and throw that in a pan with ¼ cup of dry white wine, 1tbs champagne vinegar, and some ground black pepper. Cook it over medium-high heat until it has reduced, I think Martha said to 1 tbs. I just cooked it until it looked like there was less in the pan than there had been.

While it’s cooking you’re going to want to set aside 3 egg yolks. Once the mixture has been reduced add 3 tablespoons of boiling water, and then strain it into a heatproof bowl using a fine mesh sieve (I was so excited that we had one of those, I wasn’t looking forward to picking out the shallots with a fork). Reduce the boiling water to a simmer. Off the heat, add the 3 egg yolks to the bowl with the reduced mixture and whisk them until the mixture is pale yellow. Then you’re going to put the heatproof bowl over the pot of simmering water and whisk the eggs constantly for about 2 minutes, until the sauce thickens. Don’t stop whisking or some of the egg mixture will solidify…

Once it’s thick, you’re going to add a stick and a half… yes, a stick and a half… of butter to the sauce, one tablespoon at a time, off the heat. So ideally you want the butter to be room temperature, and you want to have sliced it into little chunks. Add it one chunk at a time and incorporate each chunk thoroughly. You can put the sauce back over the simmering water if it gets too cool to melt the butter. At this point mine looked pretty funky, and I was just sure that I had messed up, but I kept whisking away and gently heating anyway. And when I was done… I had something that looked like the stuff you get on Eggs Benedict at restaurants! I added a couple shakes of salt, the juice of one lemon, and a pinch of cayenne pepper, and then I tasted it. And then I rejoiced. It was heavenly! HEAVENLY! How had I created something so wonderful? Goodness, it was wonderful. I decided I was going to create “Eggs Rachel Ehrlich,” which would have been a dish comprised of corned beef hash, fried till crispy, topped with a poached egg or two, topped with hollandaise sauce.

Sadly, no matter how closely I read Martha’s instructions nor how many eggs I tried, I could not poach an egg. I have since looked up this video: http://www.wikihow.com/Poach-an-Egg and plan to try and poach an egg again soon.

Anyway, I used a fried egg instead, and Eggs Rachel Ehrlich was a huge success. The hollandaise sauce went really wonderfully with the corned beef hash, though I’m sure you could serve it over cardboard and it would be a dream. Seriously, make this sauce. After I finished my meal I dipped some bread in the sauce, and then licked the spoon after I transferred it to a Tupperware container (which I’m not sure if you can do, I have a feeling that hollandaise sauce won’t reheat well. We’ll see!). Then I spent the rest of the night in bed contemplating my impending death and wondering if I should make myself throw up. My wonderful housemate Larry gave me a can of Coke, and that helped, but seriously- don’t eat as much hollandaise sauce as I did. Don’t do it.

But do make it. It will make your whole life seem better.