We have only our parents to blame for the introduction to egg yolks. Every day there's some revelation about egg yolks being poison, but one egg a day, WHITE ONLY, providing complete nutrition; then they come up and say “a reasonable number of eggs, yolk-and-all, is okay”, and go on to define “reasonable” as seven to ten a week. It's difficult to keep up, and, after years of being brainwashed against egg yolks, exercising restraint and suffering deprivation, hard to switch back to eggs with yolks; there's always a guilty fear that some authority will reverse opinion and tell us our arteries are hardening and will choke with narrowing if we have even one a year.
But two questions: Why is it such a big deal, and why eat an egg if it's only white? I cannot endure the spiel about egg white omelettes tasting “just like normal ones”, “just add some dhania , hari mirch , kali mirch and you won't know the difference”? I won't know the difference? Between a white, leathery tortilla and melted sunshine? Why is it that, even in their twenties, my children's favourite sick-room food is soft-boiled eggs, tops sliced off, with buttered soldiers-of-toast, which they dip into the slurpy, runny white and yellow of the egg? As my egg maniac daughter Kadambari says, “People who abjure egg yolks have no right to comment.”
Perfect fry
And the same is true of badly fried eggs. How much to cook the yolk is a matter of crucial importance. Double-fried eggs are a waste of time, so, since the only fried egg worth considering must be sunny-side-up, its texture has to be achieved with care and concentration. If it's too cooked, it's hard and dry — like a “double-fry” — and if it's not cooked enough, the white is slimy and the yolk so thin that it spills off the toast. It should be cooked just right, to swoosh on a triangle bite of toast, and pepper must be ground over each time the yolk is punctured. As she says, a perfectly fried egg is like sunshine wearing a white Panama.
And from the comforting satisfaction of early childhood the progression to hollandaise sauce is natural. “Butter and egg yolks: Heaven must be made of hollandaise sauce,” says the same girl, the final word regarding eggs in my life. The taste, like whipped butter, is a more indulgent version of the soldiers-of-toast and soft-boiled egg, except that, instead of just yolk, its yolk whirred with melted butter. So it is the essence of the after taste of buttered toast fingers dipped in soft boiled egg.
The colour — now that we get free-range eggs with bright yolks — is a deep yellow mixed with a dash of white so that the translucence of the egg is changed to a more creamy opaqueness. And the texture is that of custard just before it thickens and settles — seemingly light, almost frothy — you only realise how heavy it is when you're done licking your lips.
Mock sauce
Hollandaise sauce is undeniably delicious — the sunny colour, the velvety texture, the mild, creamy taste, the buttery flavour — but not often made at home because we consider it a “difficult” sauce. It's an emulsion of clarified butter and egg yolks, and can go wrong and curdle. But first Julia Child and then others have developed easier, mock Hollandaise versions which can even be made in a blender, and which French chefs call “sauce bâtarde”. If followed exactly they're foolproof. Typically it's served with steamed vegetables, or with egg: Benedict or Florentine, with spinach.
My favourite is with barely blanched asparagus spears, crisp and tender. Variations on the basic sauce are Chantilly (or mousseline) with fresh cream; maltaise with the zest and juice of a blood orange, “malta”; Mikado with tangerine; sauce aux câpres, with drained capers; and mustard sauce, with white mustard.
