Eggs Benedict

DC is a big brunch town. Don’t ask anyone about their favorite brunch place unless you have some time to spare to listen to the answer. On any Saturday or especially Sunday, you’ll see crowds of people waiting up to an hour or more for a table at Bread and Chocolate or Afterwords Cafe. Some folks are willing to wait more than twice that long for a pancake at Eastern Market. Brunch is almost as much about not having to cook and clean up as it is about the food. But with a good sous chef, a pot of boiling water, and a half-hour, you can make an Eggs Benedict with Home Fries brunch that’s as good as any you’ll find at a cafe or restaurant. Most people are worried that making hollandaise sauce is too hard. It’s true that it’s labor-intensive; it requires constant stirring with a whisk for at least three minutes while the sauce is thickening. But it’s not at all difficult, as long as you have someone who can help with the other dishes while you whisk the sauce. The conventional wisdom is that it takes some skill to keep it from breaking (“Breaking” is the term used when overheating causes the hollandaise to change in consistency from a sauce to something like soft-scrambled eggs. It’s called breaking because the emulsion process breaks down, and the sauce then breaks into its component parts of egg yolks and butter). Well, my hollandaise breaks one out of every two or three times I make it. But a couple of drops of cool water whisked into the broken sauce will bring it back every time. Also, don’t worry if you don’t have a double boiler; a mixing bowl on top of a pot with an inch full of simmering water will work fine. Hollandaise is also excellent on asparagus, poached salmon and grilled strip steaks. Like most multicourse meals, this brunch is more about planning than cooking. I recommend starting with the home fries, then once those are covered and cooking you can start on the hollandaise. Once you finish the sauce add more water to the pot and bring it to a boil to use for poaching the eggs. Since this is a pretty heavy brunch, I like to serve it with a salad.