L'Academie, Week 7: Eggs

(Watch out--the first five words of this article are boring, but it gets better from there.)

Health department regulations state that (See? I told you.) real hollandaise sauce must be re-made every hour at restaurants to prevent food poisoning. While this prevents you from contracting salmonella poisoning, it also means that most restaurants just use a hollandaise sauce mix in their eggs benedict instead of going to all the trouble to constantly remake the real stuff during the brunch rush. Here's how to make Hollandaise Sauce yourself, at home, in your PJs, for less trouble than you'd take to find a parking space near a good brunch place on a Sunday morning.

Separate the whites and yolks of a bunch of eggs. (Three eggs per person is plenty, and you'll have leftovers.) Do this by cracking them a flat surface, not a corner, which will drive pointy bits into the white. Let the yolk settle into one half of the shell and let the white fall out. Pour from one half-shell to the other--carefully--until the white is mostly gone. Pour the yolks into a metal bowl.

Whisk the yolks furiously until they are the consistency of cake batter. This takes awhile, so make sure you have spent the night with someone who is willing to do half the work for breakfast. They should be slightly lighter yellow than unwhisked yolks. Put the bowl over a pot of lightly simmering water (but not touching the water) and leave it there to keep warm, but not cook the yolks. Now slowly pour in some lemon juice (roughly two easy squeezes from a lemon half, I'd say) while still whisking rapidly to emulsify it. Whisk in some warm, melted butter the same way; clarified is good, but not necessary. Keep whisking until it is a consistency you want to eat, and add some cayenne if you want.

Next up: Grains! (Yawn. But I'll tell you how to make coconut sticky rice.)