Lazy Sundays

After sleeping in and watching True Grit and U571 on TV this morning, I was in the mood for some culinary experimentation. This led me to start making my own salmon benedict.

English muffins are an easy recipe for someone already capable of plucking their own pizza dough, maybe even easier since they seem to be more forgiving. There are two ways of doing it, one is a gooey batter, the other a rolled dough. Either way it seems, a culture of yeast eats sugar and craps carbon-dioxide in order to help make those nooks and crannies.

Here's my first batch!


The main difference from pizza seems to be the use of milk, and no oil. Similar rise time seems to work though.

They came out looking exactly like Thomas's, and in fact that's exactly how they tasted, leaving Claire a bit disappointed that they weren't somehow much better. The fresh taste is great though, I think they're worth the effort.

I'm totally pumped, because now I get to use it for salmon benedict, Yeah! Claire doesn't like salmon, nor benedict, so she missed out tonight. :(

My next adventure was in hollandaise sauce, which required watching several videos to get pumped up, since the only other time I've tried that resulted in some strange looking egg drop soup of butter. I found a cool video online which showed me some tricks- like using your hands to separate yolks, and how to double-boil them. The other key was using water if the emulsion stiffened up too much. Also, "hollandaise can sense fear." I might get the t-shirt.

Success! I've also mastered the art of poaching eggs, which don't seem any worse for the wear when I have to use apple cider vinegar since we're out of white vinegar. Now the only thing I need to achieve the "total culinary mega challenge" of completely scratch salmon benedict is a smoker, so I can smoke my own fresh salmon.

In related family news little Karl tried his first bite of smoked salmon. He seemed to like it!