As part of my meal planning/recipe organization project, I’ve been going through all of my collected recipes and seeing which ones work for me. I have a binder full of recipes I want to try, and a journal full of notes on recipes in progress, and once I’ve got something down pat, I add it to the notebooks. I’ve started calling these “the canon.” So once I finish fine tuning a recipe just so, it goes into the notebooks were it becomes canonized.

My meal planning schedule makes Friday night pizza night. I have to admit, I really don’t enjoy pizza all that much. I don’t know why, I used to like it fine, I just developed a weird aversion to it. Even so, I had to keep this night on the schedule for Bear, and for Atti as he gets older and starts bringing friends around – I think pizza night will be a big hit. But I had to do something to keep myself interested, so I put on the ol’ thinking cap and started coming up with the most gourmet pizzas I could. This is my new favorite one.

Eggs Benedict Pizza
Pizza crust – your favorite recipe
Monterey Jack cheese
Canadian Bacon
6 eggs
Hollandaise sauce

Hollandaise sauce
1 lb butter, clarified (melt the butter and only use the clear yellow part, not the milky solids)
Dash of salt
Dash of peppercorns
½ C white vinegar
1/3 C water
6 egg yolks
1 – 2 T lemon juice
Salt and cayenne pepper to taste

Combine the vinegar, salt and peppercorns in a saucepan and cook until nearly dry. Add the water and stir thoroughly to pick up all those vinegar crystals, then strain out the peppercorns. Allow to cool. Add the egg yolks to the vinegar mixture in a non-reactive bowl and beat well. Hold the bowl over a pot of boiling water and beat until the yolks are thick and creamy and reach the ribbon stage. This is when the eggs are thick enough that they start to hold some shape and look like ribbons trailing off the whisk. This will give you quite a work out if you do it by hand, but it’s a whole lot easier to use a hand or stick blender. Remove the bowl from the heat. Ladle in the butter slowly while beating the eggs, only a few drops at a time at first and waiting until all the butter is fully incorporated. If the sauce becomes too thick to beat, add the lemon juice and continue to add the butter. Add lemon juice, salt, and cayenne as needed to taste. Strain if necessary to remove any egg clumps.

Mix up crust, brush with olive oil. Distribute Canadian Bacon and top with grated cheese. Bake. When the crust is done, crack six eggs around the top of the pizza. Leave in the oven for 1 minute and then take out. Carry over cooking will take the eggs the rest of the way. Serve with Hollandaise sauce for dipping.

When we made Hollandaise sauce in class, it didn’t really thrill me. It’s creamy and buttery, but tasted on it’s own you don’t really get what all the fuss is about. I’ve had Eggs Benedict plenty of times, even a particularly fantastic Crabcakes Eggs Benedict, and absolutely loved them, but I never walked away craving the sauce. That’s the particular gift of Hollandaise sauce. It doesn’t overpower, it spotlights. The flavor blends in and makes everything else just shine. It’s totally worth the trouble.