Mayodaise and Time Clarifications

Photo from Bon Appétit

James and I decided to have a festive and indulgent breakfast this morning, or actually, perhaps I should say I decided to have a festive breakfast morning (Mother's Day! Yeah... I have a mother... I should eat steak), fueled by visions of the "fool-proof" hollandaise sauce featured in my recent Bon Appétit issue. You may remember my past hang-ups about hollandaise,  the fear and terror it creates in me, juxtaposed against my insatiable urges for the sauce. 
The process outlined in Bon Appétit claims you, yes YOU, can create easy, fool-proof hollandaise sauce in 5-minutes, using a blender and ... uh... one pan. Since James was able to do it the old fashioned method and it turned out fantastic, I figured perhaps this dumbed down version could be my personal introduction into the (previously denied) culinary world of cream sauces.

However, in case you didn't notice, the world has not imploded, pigs do not fly, hell has not frozen over and I found a way to fuck hollandaise up once again. Ok, check out the recipe:

Blender Hollandaise (from Bon Appétit)

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cubed
• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice, plus more
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preparation

• Fill a blender with hot water; set aside. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until foaming. Remove pan from heat. Drain blender and dry well. Put egg yolks and 2 Tbsp. lemon juice in blender; cover and blend to combine. Working quickly and with blender running, remove lid insert and slowly pour hot butter into blender in a thin stream of droplets, discarding the milk solids in bottom of the saucepan. Blend until creamy sauce forms. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and with more lemon juice. Serve immediately.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Pretty simple sounding, oui oui? Well, after the meal was consumed (errant sauce and all) I checked out the vid to see what differences in preparation must have occurred. And seriously, check it out: here it is.
  After I got over the excitement of realizing this was Eric Ripert's recipe, I watched him blend the sauce for about, oh... 10 seconds? Seriously: watch it and time it for me please. Ripert and the other dude even refer to it as "60 second" hollandaise. Ugh. You can't mess around with me and sauces! I need guidelines! Strict measurements! Hard and fast rules! The freaking printed piece called it 5-minute hollandaise! I blended that shit til I got mayo. Specifically, I blended that shit for 5 minutes. When I pressed that stop button and ventured a taste, that stuff was THICK. 
  
  
  Creamy, delicious, lemony mayo, but nonetheless, mayo. It was so good though, that I still poured that all over my plate and wondered how commercial mayo sucks so much.  
  
  
  
  Mayo: it's breakfast!

You win some, you lose some.

Finished an otherwise excellent dinner tonight with a scoop of bacon ice cream with the Jocy & the Luis. Let's just say: some things are better off without a liberal dose of bacon grease. Many hours later and my gut is still feeling it.
Tapalaya verdict: Stick with the pulled pork and the steak specials and steer clear of any dairy/pork combos.

soda and disasters

I've been sick, it's been cold, so the obvious choice is chicken soup! I put chicken, carrots, celery, pasilla pepers, onions, garlic, and rice. I made two tiny mistakes.

1st mistake: I always put too much rice. The rice expands so much my soup ends up being more of a porridge and less of a soup.

The 2nd mistake was when I accidentally grabbed the cloves instead of the black pepper (they are both in square tins). Needless to say, cloves are perhaps the one spice that doesn't go well in chicken soup. It was edible and now that I've watered it down it's not as noticable, but peter has to keep tellling me next time I should try nutmeg. He's a modern day Billy Crystal that one.

Well that highlight of the meal ended up being the glass bottle of coke peter bought to see if it tasted better than canned coke. And indeed it did! It was crisper, less sickenly sweet, and came in a cool bottle!! what a day it was. Stay tuned to see if glass bottled pepsi is better than canned pepsi... riveting...