Difficulty
Time 25 mins
Servings
6
Ingredients
Preparation
Preparation is key, as with all cooking, especially if what you're attempting to prepare is complicated, and as my father used to say - to make one bacon roll is easy, but to make one hundred bacon rolls is difficult. So make sure that you have everything ready in advance of cooking so that when it comes to arranging the dish, everything is just that little bit more straight forward.
Tip: The fresher your eggs are, the better the outcome will be as older eggs tend to fall apart when poaching, with the egg white becoming very stringy, regardless of technique.
75g butter
1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp English mustard
A pinch of salt
A splash ice cold water
Lemon juice
Cayenne pepper (Optional)
A good quality thick bread, or a muffin
2/3 slices of good ham, warmed
6 Quale eggs for poaching
Eggs Benedict Tapa
My version of this classic American breakfast dish brings a balance of flavour to this delicate tapas which here is set on thickly cut bread. Served with a poached quale egg, farmhouse ham, a nice thick hollandaise sauce, and garnished with a few chive sprigs, this example of British Tapas really does sum up my idea of 'the perfect mouthful', and if you can get the poached quale egg right, it simple oozes with flavour throughout.
The Hollandaise
The poached eggs
For this dish, the Hollandaise ideally needs to be slightly thicker than usual.
Melt 75g butter in a pan, any white residue from the surface, remove from heat and cover with foil to keep the butter warm. Into a glass bowl (or metal bowl), drop 1 egg yolk in and add the vinegar, salt and a splash of ice-cold water. Boil a little water in a pan and reduce to simmer, place the glass bowl over water and whisk for a few minutes until the mixture becomes pale and thickens, this will take around 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the English mustard and slowly stir and melted butter until you see a creamy thick sauce, season if you wish and cover with foil to keep warm.
Quale eggs are fiddly by comparison to larger eggs. Be careful as you open each egg not to break the yolk, I found by using a serrated knife to break the shell and membrane that the egg opened as a chicken egg would do.
Boil a large pan of water and add vinegar, create a swirling motion or vortex with a wooden spoon and carefully drop an egg into the swirl, cook for no more than 60 seconds or until the white sets and remove from the pan and place onto a pre-warmed plate and cover with kitchen roll to dry, repeat this process for the remaining eggs.
The Base
Difficulty
I decided to prepare this tapa on a thickly sliced white bread which cut triangular and lightly oven toasted, traditionally this dish is served on two half muffins but I felt that the bread made this dish feel more like a tapa.
On top of this, fold some of the warmed ham and add it to the top of the bread, then add one of the poached quale eggs and drizzle with a generous amount of the Hollandaise, repeat the process, garnish and serve.
I've given this dish a '3 chef hat' difficulty as the Hollandaise sauce required some attention to get it perfect, and the quale eggs are a little fiddly, but don't let this deter you, this is one of the best tapas that I have made, and well worth the effort - it's all about the perfect mouthful!
We'd love to hear from you
Please get in touch if you have tried this recipe, I would love to hear your thoughts on how easy you found it to make, how delicious you found it, or if you have any suggestions on how to improve this dish or if you have suggestions for future tapas, I am more than open to posting recipe ideas and photos.
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