breakfast

Whiting Cooked in Rice Flour with Lemon and Garlic

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This is our preferred way of cooking whiting on the boat for breakfast. It is simple and quick, but the flavour of the whiting comes through beautifully. The whiting must, of course, be very fresh. Be generous with the lemon juice. It caramelises a little in the pan and the whiting are tossed in it after they have cooked.

20 whiting fillets
Ground rice
Butter
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Juice of 1 large or 2 small lemons
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
A handful of finely chopped parsley or thyme leaves
Lemon wedges, extra, to serve

Dredge the whiting in the ground rice. Heat the butter in a large heavy-based frying pan and add the garlic. Add the whiting fillets, in batches, and cook for about 1 – 2 minutes before turning and cooking the other side. The fillets should be almost breaking up. Keep warm whilst remaining fillets are cooked.

Remove the fish from the pan and add the lemon juice. Allow the lemon juice to caramelise a little, then return all the whiting fillets to the pan. Turn them so that all the fillets are coated with lemon.

Eggs Florentine (Authentic)

Eggs Florentine (Traditional)

This recipe, like Eggs Benedict, is constantly being bastardised. Eggs Florentine, or more correctly, Oeufs poches florentine, is a creation of Auguste Escoffier, the father of modern French cuisine. It does not use hollandaise sauce, but bechamel sauce to coat the poached eggs. Escoffier did his Eggs Florentine as a sort of communal dish, containing up to 8 poached eggs. I think everybody nowadays would prefer their Eggs Florentine served in individual ramekins, or perhaps two poached eggs in cocotte dishes. The quantities here are Escoffier’s and, are very vague as all his receipts (yes, receipts) are.

250g spinach
6 – 8 poached eggs
Bechamel sauce
1 – 2 egg yolks
Grated cheese (I would use Gruyere or Parmesan)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper (presumably)

Cook the spinach in boiling salted water and drain thoroughly. Chop and return to the pan with a little butter. Cook for a few minutes, then turn into a fireproof dish. (I think I would wilt the spinach in a little butter, drain off the water released by the spinach, then transfer the spinach to a fine sieve. Press down on the spinach to release as much water as possible, then divide the spinach among the individual ramekins or cocotte dishes.)

Preheat the griller to hot.

Arrange the eggs on top of the spinach. These can be eggs poached in advance and reheated just before using.

Add 1 or 2 egg yolks to the standard bechamel sauce to prevent it turning under the griller, then coat the reheated and well-drained eggs with the sauce.

Sprinkle with grated cheese, add a little melted butter and brown lightly under the griller before serving.

(You could add the cheese to the white sauce, stirring well to melt it, and then coat the eggs with what would now be a mornay sauce. Brown lightly under the griller before serving.)

Serves 3 – 4 in cocotte dishes, 6 – 8 in ramekins.

(Photo from Delicious.co.uk)

Faux eggs ‘Florentine’

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This is really just another take on the Eggs Benedict theme….poached eggs with hollandaise sauce, sitting on, this time, spinach. True ‘Eggs Florentine’, it is not, despite the fact that many breakfast-serving Brisbane restaurants are calling it that. I guess you can call anything sitting on spinach ‘florentine’! Nevertheless, the egg, spinach and hollandaise combination is quite delicious!

4 thick slices of sourdough bread
Olive oil
1 clove of garlic (optional)
Baby spinach leaves
8 poached eggs (these can be poached in advance and reheated, as they would be in a restaurant situation)
Hollandaise sauce (see Sauces)
Cayenne pepper
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chives, trimmed, but left long, to garnish

Brush both sides of the sourdough slices with a little olive oil and place under a hot grill for 1 – 2 minutes each side, until crisp and golden. Rub one side of each slice with the garlic clove.

Top each slice of sourdough with a generous quantity of baby spinach, top the spinach with 2 reheated and well-drained poached eggs. Spoon hollandaise sauce over the eggs.

Sprinkle with a little cayenne pepper, then season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Garnish with the chives and serve immediately.

Soft poached eggs

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“Good poached eggs are one of the joys of this life, but a properly poached egg is a rare thing. Even after thirty-something years of marriage, I cannot get used to eggs poached in an egg poacher. Nanya poached eggs to perfection, and the only other person I have known since to do this, was Peter Maloney. Not to mention the fact that eggs cooked this way do not leave that impossible-to-get-off albumen deposit on the egg poacher.”

I wrote the above about six years ago, and despite thinking I had the art of egg poaching down to a fine art, I still didn’t really. I have bought egg timers, experimented with eggs poached in cling wrap (!) and usually resorted to the good old egg poacher.

Yesterday, however, Dad returned from a trip to the Whitsundays fishing on South Pacific 11 with Ron Jenyns, Bobby Douglas and numerous other reprobates. Ron’s resident chef, Brett, served perfect soft poached eggs to at least twelve people for breakfast every morning. When everybody except Bobby and Dad went collecting those horrible black-lip oysters that grow in the Whitsundays, they cornered Brett and asked him to teach them to poach the perfect egg. This morning I was presented with two on toast. And they were perfect.   

Brett’s theory is that it is the vinegar that is added to the poaching water that sets the albumen (the white).  The problem with most people is that they simply don’t add enough vinegar so the white floats around in a most unappetizing fashion. He uses 1 part vinegar to 15 parts water. If you think that is a lot, he says that most restaurants use 1 part vinegar to 7 parts water. Use the cheapest vinegar you can buy. The one he uses in the one I use for cleaning windows.

Heat a large saucepan (forget the frying pan – you should have at least 10 cm of water to poach the eggs in. Work out just how much water you have used and do your sums. You’ll soon get used to using the right amount of vinegar.

Bring the water/vinegar to the boil. Break the eggs straight into the water (none of this ‘break it into a cup and slide it into the water first’!) The eggs will sink like stones so slide a spoon under each egg to ensure it doesn’t stick to the bottom. Then turn down the heat until the water is barely moving.

Once the eggs are in and not sticking, increase the heat to a gentle simmer. When they rise to the surface of the water, they are done and should be removed immediately to drain.

Note:  Eggs can be poached up to 24 hours in advance. Slip eggs into a bowl of iced water to cool quickly and not cook further.  Cover the bowl and store in the refrigerator. Reheat eggs by carefully lifting them from the water and sliding them into a pot of gently simmering water. Allow 1 minute to heat through, remove and drain well on absorbent paper.