The Joy of Breakfast

Breakfast has always been my favorite meal. Riley never understood why fancy Italian restaurant might not impress me while many cheap breakfast places always fill me with joy and excitement. To me, it's simply because breakfast is the first meal of the day, my brain is activated the moment I have breakfast. Out of various options, Eggs benedicts are my favorites. Hollandaise sauce has this magical power to add flavor to pouched eggs without overpowering them. The flowing texture in pouched eggs also fascinates me, warmth paired with creaminess- nothing can  be more comforting than that.
Due to my craziness for bennies, before I even got a cookbook, I tried to make eggs bennies from scratch. Pouched eggs and Hollandaise sauce are both very challenging to make from what I heard. I thought if I could successfully make these two things in my first try, that would be the most rewarding thing in the world. Youtube videos really come handy when it comes to "How to" questions. Apparently, vinegar and spinning motion in the water are the secret to Pouched eggs. When my friend Sahika pulled an egg in the spinning water, it really looked unpleasant, I was very nervous about it because it appeared to me that the spinning motion was too weak to hold an egg together, most of the egg white were very spread out. Sahika even made the comment that it looked like a fetus...we were both grossed out in the first 5 seconds...Believe it or not, it actually worked! (see the picture below) We were so excited that we were clapping to ourselves. This is the same joy as when I made money trading US treasuries.

Hollandaise sauce was much easier actually, except for the fact that it takes forever for the egg yolks to turn to a lighter color. But it's all about love and patience when it comes to gourmet cooking. Rushing would most likely result in bad quality or even failure, which is counterproductive.Life is also like that, whether it's studying or working or being in a relationship. Taking it slow when necessary will surprisingly generate better results. It is essential to keep the temperature of the steam moderate. A cloth between the water pot and the sauce container is the key. The last step is to integrate butter into egg yolks. It is pretty fun dripping melted butter drop by drop into the egg yolk while whisking the egg yolks. The fun part is to observe texture of egg yolks thickening to form into exactly what hollandaise sauce should look like. Again, a sense of achievement arises. 

My style in cooking is to load as many tasty items as I can to one dish and put chilli pepper in pretty much everything. Final result is always satisfying. Multi-grain bagel+Cream cheese+pouched egg+smoked salmon+saute mushrooms+avocado+spicy hollandaise sause= Tiffany's Benny. Voila! Quite the success!