00:01Oh, God. This is great. This is great. This is terrible.
00:09Hi, guys. I'm Chef Mimi. I'm here today in the Upper East Side to cook Eggs Benedict for you all.
00:13Typically, I cook at Vina Terria, which is in Harlem. Today, I need to know, whose kitchen is this?
00:19Hi, I'm Shoshana, and this is my kitchen. Only eggs have ever been cooked in it.
00:26The back burner is temperamental, so I've never used it, and when I attempt to use it, it looks like
00:32it's going to explode.
00:34And be safe. Solid.
00:37My first reaction about opening the door was, this apartment is dying.
00:41But in the same sense, I also knew in the back of my mind that it's all right, because everything's
00:44workable.
00:45All right, well, you got water and alcohol. Good. It's small, but I knew we would be okay.
00:50First, I'm going to make the biscuit dough. I see first thing here that we have a mason jar watch.
00:55Oh So Perfectly has measurements on it. A fourth of a cup of every flour.
00:59So I like to consider myself what I call a backyard baker. I like to do a little bit of
01:02this and a little bit of that.
01:04Having a mason jar to measure was not very precise, but it also just gave me kind of in the
01:08general direction of like,
01:09cool, this is about what I need.
01:11Baking powder. It's one teaspoon, so I'm just going to know in the palm of my hand.
01:16Baking soda. The reason we have both, it's going to help biscuits really kind of rise up.
01:19Salt for half a teaspoon. We got our sugar now. Butter. We're going to use about two and a half
01:25tablespoons.
01:26You always want to make sure that your butter is very cold. You don't want it to melt.
01:30Your hands are perfectly fine to be your mixer.
01:32I had an ex-girlfriend who loved breakfast. So because of that, I've made biscuits probably over the course of
01:38three years, like 50 to 70 times.
01:41We're well on our way to making really great biscuits this morning.
01:44When I grip it, it's already starting to come together and I haven't even added any wet ingredients.
01:49Heavy cream. And I've got one egg. Whisk this together. Mix a little in at a time.
01:54Now I'm just kneading the dough together. It's already at a consistency that I'm not going to use any more
02:00of the liquid
02:00for fear that it's going to make my batter too runny.
02:02I'm going to set it in the fridge and let it rest.
02:04So you're probably wondering why I'm sitting on the floor. Well, this is the best possible workspace that we have.
02:10I can't say that I've ever worked on the floor in my 15-year career, but there is a first
02:15time for everything.
02:16Well, her floor is pretty clean. And I'm going to casually dry our floor off here.
02:20I've got some paper bags that I've just cut up quickly.
02:23We're all taped down. I found this bottle of tequila. And since we don't have a rolling pin,
02:28I'm going to wrap it in some plastic just to keep it clean. I don't like my tequila dirty.
02:32If you're feeling nervous, you should probably just go ahead and take a shot of this tequila before you even
02:36start.
02:36I don't have to roll too much. I'm just kind of looking for half an inch.
02:39We're going to need something to make the shape so we can actually have the biscuits itself.
02:43So we've got a mug. We have this cup. I've got a little mason jar here.
02:48And this is a perfect size because if you think about it, our egg will fit perfectly on top.
02:53With your extra dough, you can ball it up and do the same thing again.
02:56Kind of an ugly biscuit. And there we go. It's actually a great work service down here.
03:00So next, I'm going to take the biscuits and I'm going to place them on our toaster oven.
03:05Can't say I've ever used one of these before, but...
03:08Okay, yep. Don't know what I'm doing.
03:11Nope. Yes.
03:12So I've got it to like 375. It feels like it's ready now.
03:17So I'm going to go ahead and throw them in and we're going to chuck them in like 10 minutes.
03:21See what we get.
03:23My biscuits are all done.
03:24I've got two sponges here, which is going to be perfect actually to take them out.
03:29Two dry sponges, not wet.
03:31Careful when you do this.
03:32I'm looking at the biscuits and I'm really happy with them.
03:35They smell delicious. They're perfect.
03:38Next, we're going to make the hollandaise sauce.
03:39I'm going to need egg yolks and we're going to need butter.
03:42And then the other things I'm going to look for are an acid.
03:45Lemon juice is perfect.
03:46And also some peppercorn.
03:47A little bit of butter.
03:48I'm going to microwave it at probably 30 seconds.
03:54All right.
03:55And that was about eight tablespoons of butter.
03:56So now I'm going to take my eggs and I'm going to separate them.
04:00I think for me, I like using my hands best.
04:03One more.
04:04And here I've got my four egg yolks.
04:07My lemon juice.
04:08Does anyone have a whisk here? No?
04:10A trusty fork here that we're going to use.
04:13You know when it's ready to add the fat to the egg yolks.
04:17When I do this now, I can tell I can't hold in figure eight.
04:20It just means I have ways to go with whisking.
04:22While I start to do this, I'm going to go ahead and put some water in my pot.
04:25And the point of this water is to not boil it.
04:27You want to simmer it.
04:28While we do that, I'm going to just keep whisking away,
04:31which might take a little longer since we don't have a whisk.
04:36This is definitely an arm workout.
04:41I am breaking a little bit of a sweat right now.
04:44So since this is taking a long time and my wrist is getting tired,
04:47I'm going to grab another fork.
04:52I can see my eight, which is what I'm looking for.
04:55So that's how you know you're ready.
04:57And then my pot of water over here is up now to a boil.
05:00So I'm going to go ahead and just turn it down just a little bit.
05:02And the objective really of putting this over, you don't want to fry the egg yolks.
05:07It's about lightly cooking them thoroughly all the way through.
05:10So I can also see now it's a really nice thick runny sauce.
05:14We're going to go ahead then and slowly start to add our fat to it.
05:17A little bit of my butter and whisk really heavily.
05:19Because this is the part where you really want these two ingredients to come together.
05:23And if you do a lot and then don't whisk quickly, well, they're not going to come together.
05:27A little bit of fresh cracked pepper in there.
05:29And then also salt.
05:33Let's see what we got.
05:38Tastes really good.
05:38As soon as the hollandaise started to thicken up and I could see my figure eight,
05:42it was like the moment of relief in my mind.
05:44Like, all right, we're now on cruise control.
05:45We're going to go ahead and start cooking our Canadian bacon.
05:48Mmm, smells like breakfast in here.
05:50And if you can hear that sound, that's the sound of awesome.
05:53And I'm going to give them one more flip and then we're going to go ahead and be done.
05:56Just set those aside and we're going to start doing our poached eggs.
06:00Also, I'm going to add a little bit of vinegar to the water, which helps the eggs come together.
06:04Maybe like three tablespoons.
06:06It's a trick like every restaurant I've ever worked in, they always use.
06:08I'm going to probably poach two eggs at a time just to speed things up a little bit.
06:14Don't touch them until they've been in there and you can start to really see the egg white form.
06:17Otherwise, the yolk will break.
06:19See how they have a little bit of resistance?
06:20So I know they're cooked and runny still.
06:22I'm actually going to take what I did call my ugly biscuits that I think are pretty.
06:27I'm going to use my ugly biscuits for this.
06:29And then I'm going to gently take my poached eggs again.
06:32So we're just going to do a little bit of freshly cracked pepper on top.
06:35And that's it.
06:36I can't believe I pulled that off.
06:38The most frustrating part about this process was whisking the hollandaise sauce with no whisk.
06:44A little more muscle than I thought, but I feel good about that.
06:48That's a really good eggs benedict, if I do say so myself.
06:51Being a backyard baker in the end, it helped me out.
06:55Or go with f guam and fix that over.
06:58You feel secure like you.
