Hollandaise --> Eggs Florentine

The poached egg. Slightly less perfect than the oeuf en cocotte, but simpler and healthier. Unless you decide to cover it in Hollandaise sauce, put it on top of some spinach (healthy again, maybe?), and toast. I needed an extra hand in the kitchen.

But first, the Hollandaise Sauce. Once again, Larousse:

Hollandaise. A hot emulsified sauce based on egg yolks and clarified butter. It is the foundation of several other sauces, including chantilly (or mousseline), maltaise, mikado and mustard sauce, depending on the ingredients added. It is served with fish cooked in a court-bouillon, or with boiled or steamed vegetables. The sauce should be made in a well-tinned copper or stainless steel sauté pan; an aluminium pan wil turn it greenish. As it must not get too hot, hollandaise sauce should be kept warm in a bain marie. If it does curdle, it can be re-emulsified by adding a spoonful of water, drop by drop; use hot water if the sauce is cold, cold water if the sauce is hot.

Basically, Hollandaise is an emulsion of butter and lemon using egg as the emulsifier, since lemon (acid) and butter (fat) are mortal enemies in real life. The recipe is finicky enough that it's important to have everything in the mise-en-place ahead of time.

Hollandaise Ingredients
3 egg yolks
1/2 T lemon juice
200 g butter (50 g cold, 150 melted)
salt
white pepper

Method
1. Whisk the egg yolks in a pan (not on the stove!) until they are a lighter yellow. Depending on the color of the yolk to start with (organic eggs may never get to the 'lemon yellow' color our recipe hinted at).
2. Place the pan in a bain-marie and add the lemon juice, whisking continuously. The water should be warm, but not hot. Whisk the eggs until they are the consistency of cream, not thoroughly cooked, but warm.
3. Add the cold butter, take the eggs off the heat, and whisk until incorporated. The mixture should be thickening and pulling away from the pan.
4. Add salt and pepper and more lemon juice if desired, but only by tiny bits at a time.
5. Incorporate the rest of the melted butter bit by bit, whisking, letting the sauce thicken. Keep warm and use immediately.

Eggs Florentine Ingredients
1 piece of toast
1/2 cup of spinach, cooked, with salt and pepper (and garlic powder if desired)
1 poached egg
4 T Hollandaise sauce

Method
If you've gotten this far, you don't need instructions. Just pile it all on and enjoy. :)

Poached Eggs over Spinach with Sauce Velouté (Ravigote)

This might not look the most appetizing in photos, but trust me, this tasted delicious.

Ravigote sauce has this sort of cryptic and scary entry in Larousse:

Ravigote. A spicy sauce served hot or cold but always highly seasoned. Cold ravigote is a vinaigrette mixed with capers, chopped herbs, and chopped onion. The hot sauce is made by adding velouté sauce to equal quantities of white wine and wine vinegar, reducing with chopped shallots; it is finished with chopped herbs and served particularly with calf's head and brains and boiled fowl.

Essentially, the cold version is a herbed vinaigrette that lends itself to mussels, veggies,, and salad in general.

We couldn't find a more exact recipe for warm ravigote anywhere, so we used this opportunity to practice a velouté and then go crazy with some leftover spinach and eggs and a package of smoked salmon I accidentally carried with me in my bag all the way to London and back while British-Librarying the whole day.

Velouté Ingredients
75 g butter
75 g flour
1.5 litres chicken stock

Cooking procedure
1. Melt butter with flour in a pan to make a blond roux.
2. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil, cooking for up to 30 minutes.



If I could do it again, I'd halve the white wine vinegar and put in a bit more white wine to compensate for the lost flavor. The sauce ended up very tart, and although I liked it a lot (sauerkraut, pickled beets, and mustard being some of my favorite foods), I don't that many people would.

Ravigote Ingredients
75 ml white wine vinegar
75 ml white wine
5 shallots
2 cloves garlic
1 T Herbs de Provence
pepper

Ravigote Procedure
1. Chop the shallots and garlic and let sweat in some butter for about 5 minutes.
2. Add white wine and vinegar to a stockpot, and simmer to reduce a bit.
3. Combine shallots and garlic to liquid, and add herbs.
4. Reduce to ~50% the original volume, and add to the velouté.
5. Reduce slightly more if desired, and add pepper to taste.