Posts tagged eggs florentine

sophiecakes:

Benedicts Florentine (sautéed spinach and tomato topped with crispy onions) atop toasted English muffin, with poached egg, and whole-grain mustard hollandaise
Served with hash browns, grits, or fruit 

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four1sixfive1four:

Move over ladies who lunch, we are the gents that brunch! Charming and eclectic, Griffintown Café (1378 rue Notre Dame West) is a place well worth traveling for. Located in the historic district of Griffintown (hence the name), this little café serves up home-cooked meals that are fresh, tasty, and low key: think hearty-chic.

The food is served in a simple, home-style manner that mirrors the general genre of this restaurant. It’s the kind of place you could show up hungover from the night before and scoff down some Brioche French toast or wear an uber-prep outfit and enjoy a Tom Collins with your Eggs Benedict.

Brunch-fare is what you would expect, with some interesting twists. Eggs florentine can be served with Goat Cheese (photographed above) and this is one of the few places in Montreal you can find peameal bacon to go with most of the dishes (photographed below - Canadian Breakfast).

Low-brow, urban, delicious. A place where a guy can be a guy and enjoy great food, great times and relax while doing so.

That’s all … AE

whattoeat:

One of my favorite ways to start a weekend is to put on some music, make a big pot of coffee (has to be La Colombe), and cook the kind of breakfast I never eat on weekdays. There’s something so lovely about sitting down to a leisurely breakfast on a sunny Saturday (or Sunday) morning, with the whole day ahead of you. Last Saturday morning, I found myself stooped over the fridge, trying to figure out what could be cobbled together from its sparse contents. Eggs are one of my favorite foods ever, and I’ve really been digging the sprouted grain bread I bought recently, so I settled on eggs florentine with fake (healthy) hollandaise.

The trick to hollandaise—the real kind or the virtuous kind—is to rig up a double-boiler situation on your stove. In plain English, just bring a pot about halfway filled with water to a boil, then put a glass bowl on top of the pot, with the boiling water under it, and put your ingredients in there. If you have an actual double-boiler, use it, but I don’t, and this works just fine. Why the double-boiler for hollandaise? Because you’re using eggs, and you’re going for a smooth sauce. If you cook this directly over the heat, you’ll end up with scrambled eggs.

Eggs Florentine with Healthy Hollandaise

(Serves 2)

• 4 large eggs (preferably free-range/organic—you won’t believe how much better the eggs from your farmer’s market are)
• 4 slices toast (whatever kind you fancy) or 2 English muffins, split
• 4 cups uncooked spinach or baby spinach, or 1/2 package of frozen spinach
• Your preferred butter spread (I use Smart Balance Light)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the hollandaise:

• 2 egg yolks or 1/4 cup egg substitute
• 1 1/2 cups low-fat plain yogurt (Greek yogurt is great for its creamier consistency)
• 2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp. dry mustard (I used bashed-up whole mustard seeds in the photo above, which made the hollandaise a little lumpy but still tasted great
• Dash of cayenne
• Salt to taste (about 1/2 tsp. probably—take it easy)

You’ll want to get all these elements working at once so that everything is hot and ready to go at roughly the same time—with egg dishes, this is really key.

First, start your hollandaise. Get your water boiling while you’re getting ingredients together, then whisk together the eggs, lemon juice, mustard, cayenne, and about half the yogurt. Pour that into the glass bowl (the top of your double-boiler) and let it heat up, stirring regularly.

Meanwhile, fry up your eggs in a little butter spread. Use a very large skillet, and try to put your eggs to one side of the skillet so you can use the other side to cook up your spinach. Side note: I know this is a healthy recipe and everything, but eggs cook up marvelously in a dab of bacon fat. The next time you make bacon, just pour the excess fat into a container and refrigerate it. It keeps forever and comes in handy for extra-special fried eggs. Use a teaspoon or so per 2 eggs in place of the butter spread, and don’t feel guilty about it.

I’ve found that the best way to do eggs well is to crank up the heat in the skillet to melt the butter/bacon fat, put in your eggs, then turn the heat down to medium-low and let them firm up slowly—about 4-5 minutes. The more you work with eggs, the more you’ll get the hang of it, but I always watch for the whites to start to look “thick” and the yolks sturdy but still runny. I like my eggs sunnyside up, so this is the point when I take them off the heat—or, if you like yours more done, this would be when you’d flip them. They’ll be set up enough not to fall apart when you turn them over. You could also poach your eggs for this recipe if you prefer.

Let your spinach wilt down or, as the case may be, defrost and heat up on the other side of the pan. Salt it to taste. If you’re using frozen spinach, you’ll want to really wring it out in a paper towel to get rid of the excess liquid before you put it on the toast.

About halfway through your egg cooking time—while still keeping an eye on the hollandaise—put your bread in the toaster or under the broiler.

Once the hollandaise is heated through and has thickened up a bit, add the rest of the yogurt and let heat through, stirring constantly. Take it off the heat and salt it to taste.

Assemble your eggs florentine: Butter your warm toast lightly, add the spinach, and then carefully place your eggs on top of that. Spoon the hollandaise over the top. I like to finish it with a dusting of freshly ground black pepper and sea salt.