Eggs Benedict, sort of

No, it’s not Michelin level presentation, but it tasted damn good!

The basics of a normal Eggs Benedict are there – a toasted roll, some ham and poached eggs.

The ham was home-made on Friday – a 2kg gammon boiled for about 90 mins with molasses/dark treacle and various spicings, then baked for 20 mins with brown sugar, English mustard and Marsala rubbed over the fat.
We’ve had a ham like this over Christmas for the last few years, and last Christmas we bought two gammons because we were off for a full two weeks and thought we might get through that much. We didn’t, so the second one stayed in the freezer.

I would normally use a bagel but we had some rolls in as we’d fancied having ham rolls. We try not to eat too much by way of carbs, especially wheat, so weren’t going to have two loads in the house.

Nothing special to report about the eggs – poached in plenty of salt water, with a little white wine vinegar in it as well. No poaching aids were used, and the yolks were lovely and runny.

The accompaniment to Eggs Benedict would normally be Hollandaise Sauce, but we decided to try something different – SWMBO has taken to making mayonnaise, and more specifically garlic mayo, with the emphasis on garlic. It’s pretty potent but given we’re in lockdown then who cares? It works really well with the good ham.

The other addition is the red blobs, which are Rouille. We had some Provencal fish soup last night – from the freezer, left over from a batch I made when a friend came to dinner in February (remember that, meeting people!) and Rouille is the classic condiment for that.
Rouille is pretty much spicy mayo – if you haven’t tried it before, it really does pack a punch – our garlic mayo is punchy but the Rouille has plenty of heat as well. Lovely stuff.
I tend to buy several jars of it when we’re in France, and had one left – we used most of it with the soup (I’ll post of that a pic in a minute) and I finished it off on the Eggs Semi-Benny.

Damn – I’ve just realised I forgot the pepper on top, although there’s probably quite enough going on with the garlic mayo and the rouille!

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