Hollandaise sauce

Hollandaise sauce is disgustingly rich and delicious on Eggs-Florentine.

I confess this recipe certainly doesn't belong to our Nutritious Food, Made Fast slogan; but we will allow it twice a year. Provided your cholesterol is in order, which it will be if you are following our choice foods^[1] on a regular basis.

That's guaranteed unless you suffer from a rare condition called hypercholesterolemia.

For the vast majority of us, our bad LDL is raised because we are tucking into dishes like Hollandaise sauce on a regular (read, daily) basis; and not nearly enough of those foods that lower cholesterol.

Mind you the research is now fingering refined carbs as the real spoke in the wheel.

This page was last updated by Bernard Preston on 29th November, 2023.

Even if you live in an apartment, a parsley-pot is so easy. A lemon tree is perhaps more difficult in the icy American climates but it makes a beautiful plant, covered with gorgeous yellow fruit in moderate climates for much of the year.

• Parsley benefits
  
• Growing lemon trees
  

Hollandaise sauce

Hollandaise sauce is only for you if your cholesterol is dangerously low like mine; in short for those who love their greens and coloured-foods in general; and despise cake flour.

For your sauce, place 75g (about 3/4ths, don't measure it; it is not critical.) of the butter into a small-saucepan and melt gently over a low heat. Once liquid, set the pot aside.

Separate your two-eggs, pouring the yolks into a bowl and set it over a pot of gently boiling water, not allowing your bowl to touch the liquid. Beat the yolks with a fork until pale yellow and it begins to thicken.

Keep the egg white separately.

Add the half tablespoon of water, the lemon-juice and the parsley; and the salt and black pepper to your egg yolks and beat for half a minute more. Whilst it is over the steam.

Divide the remaining 25g of butter in half, adding one piece to your egg-yolk mixture in the bowl and stir for a couple minutes over the steam until it melts and thickens.

Remove from the stove and beat in the last small chunk of butter.

Slowly pour the mixture into the melted butter in the pot you've set aside, whisking constantly until the sauce reaches the consistency of double-cream. Season to taste perhaps with more lemon juice, salt and black pepper.

Keep your Hollandaise sauce warm by resting the bowl in the pan of now lukewarm water.

• What are phytosterols and why are they so important for the prostate gland? My urologist phoned me recently to tell me my PSA was an astonishingly low 0.9.
  

How to grow spinach

Once they are more than a day old, greens in general go limp and miserable. By far the best solution is to learn how to grow spinach; it's one of the easiest and most satisfying vegetables to raise in the back garden.

Your Hollandaise sauce is then poured over your poached-egg nesting in a bed of spinach or Swiss chard.

They are in fact first-cousins; it's good to enjoy both. They have subtle differences in minerals and vitamins like magnesium and folate.

Fresh from the garden, carefully washed to removed the slugs and other bugs; and then finely sliced and lightly blanched spinach is a wonderful and nutritious green. Old and over-cooked it's terrible.

Growing your own spinach is really the best-solution unless you have an excellent greengrocer. It's not difficult.

Sow the seed thinly in two rows about 30cm apart; and perhaps a metre long. Cover them lightly with soil and keep moist; we like to use a couple branches to give partial-shade.

The young seedlings with start sprouting within a week and provided they are growing in full sun and kept moist regularly; they will shoot up and you can start harvesting the immature leaves for a green-salad.

I like to feed them with the slosh that drips from our worm farm; it's rich in nutrients and makes a wonderful liquid-manure.

Once the leaves grow a little larger they are ready to be harvested for your Eggs-Florentine; and the Hollandaise sauce.

• How to grow spinach
• The wonder of worm farms
  

Eggs Florentine

We enjoy Eggs-Florentine almost daily; with Hollandaise sauce is rather over the top.

Hopefully your spinach is nearly done. Break the eggs for poaching on top of your greens and the remaining whites left over from making your Hollandaise sauce; waste not, want not.

---

Newsletter

Our newsletter is entitled "create a cyan zone" at your home, preserving both yourself and Mother Earth for future generations; and the family too, of course. We promise not to spam you with daily emails promoting various products. You may get an occasional nudge to buy one of my books.

Here are the back issues.

Place the spinach on a slice of hot-toast without butter, scoop up your egg and place it on the greens, and smother it with a tablespoon of your sauce. Don't let it get cold.

Tomorrow, it's back to our usual breakfast menu. That means no Hollandaise sauce for another six months; we have been experimenting with what we call our eight-colors Eggs Florentine. It is a lot easier and simply means dropping the parsley and a few other vegetables like tomato in with the spinach.

This may all seem crazy and over the top to you, but it's one way to seriously move the odds in favour of you not getting one of those nasty malignant tumours; time well spent.

We have for the last year been playing with our own hens; the difference in colour of the yolks is astounding. It's because they range freely in the garden, causing considerable damage I might add but getting a rich supply of carotenes and omega-3 in their diet.

Free range eggs are to die for; so much more of that important vitamin precursor betaine. This little known nutrient found in liver and eggs is responsible for methylating, read detoxifying, the homocysteine; this breakdown product of protein metabolism is highly inflammatory in the blood vessels.

This is just part of the reason why eggs help prevent cardiovascular disease, accepted and endorsed now by the American Heart Association.

One egg contains about 0.1mg of pyridoxine, vitamin B6, over half of our daily requirement; it's one of four nutrients identified as being essential to prevent frailty syndrome, the premature loss of energy and strength.

An egg a day keeps the cardiologist at bay. What is betaine is a question everyone with heart-disease should be able to answer.

Honestly

Honestly I taste little improvement over a thickly buttered slice of toast, spinach and poached eggs with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and a sprinkle of parsley. That is a lot less PT; we won't be making this Dutch sauce very often.

Do you use low GI bread for making your toast? The added fat, fibre and protein turn a suspect starch into a delicious and nutritious meal.

Bernard Preston

Bernard Preston is a semi-retired DC with a passion for abundant living; his dishes are not fancy and he tries to keep things simple. Unless you are crazy about cooking, most of us are too busy to spend hours in the kitchen.

This Hollandaise sauce worked out successfully but he won't make it again; there are much easier ways to get a similar taste with less schlepp.

Nutritious-food made fast is his motto; and frankly Hollandaise sauce doesn't fit the bill. Keep it for high and holy days.

But if you are physically active and enjoy a diet rich in coloured foods you need have no anxiety over butter and eggs; it's the refined and processed foods that should scare us, particularly the chemicals.

• What is emulsifier in food?
  

One great feature of this dish is all the choline in two egg yolks; the average Western diet is at least 50% deficient in this very important B vitamin. That means generalised body inflammation and birth-defects; a lot of pain one way or another.

• Choline food sources

Did you find this page interesting? How about forwarding it to a friendly book or food junkie? Better still, a social media tick would help.

Address:

56 Groenekloof Rd,

Hilton, KZN

South Africa

Website:

https://www.bernard-preston.com

Create a Cyan Zone at your home; one which complements blue areas for longevity with green for protecting Mother Earth.