Eggs Florentine
It’s probably no surprise that if choosing between having brunch at a restaurant or making it at home, I’m squarely on team Brunch At Home, especially when we find a way to pull it off and still sleep in. There’s nothing worse than waiting too long for a table only to be served an overcooked, unseasoned omelet, home fries with those gnarly bits of green pepper in there (I will die on the hill that nobody has ever longed for green peppers in their potatoes), or soggy bacon. Maybe at home imperfections also happen but those imperfections don’t cost $150 for a family of four.
But this doesn’t mean I don’t have a favorite dish to order when we go out for brunch, one I’m generally happy to offload the work of to professionals. Eggs Florentine is wildly less popular than its sibling, Eggs Benedict, but contains most of the same elements — poached eggs, a toasted english muffin, and a buttery hollandaise. However, it swaps the crisped piece of Canadian bacon underneath for a pile of sautéed spinach. To me, it is perfect: My favorite kind of egg, my favorite egg accompaniment (you could say I like spinach and eggs together, just a little), a crisp but unheavy bread foundation, all finished with a gentle cascade of the answer to a question nobody but the French, bless them, would ever ask, “Why don’t we make mayonnaise with butter instead of oil?”
Eggs Florentine at home isn’t exactly a sane undertaking. While it doesn’t take terribly long, it involves two of the tasks many home cooks dread the most: a sauce that requires constant whisking (or blending!) to emulsify and poaching eggs, i.e. dropping an egg in a pot of near-simmering water and not letting it turn into egg drop soup. I know this recipe isn’t for everyone. But if you, like me, love this dish to the moon and back, you deserve to be able to make it at home. And I, a person who doesn’t mind a slightly deranged recipe if it results in the exact thing I’m craving, made exactly the way I love it, want to share this with you. Shall we?
Ingredients:
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons or 4 ounces) unsalted butter
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
- 1/2 to 1 tablespoon lemon juice, to taste
- A dash or two of hot sauce, to taste
- 10 ounces baby spinach
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 3 tablespoons minced shallot (from 1 small)
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 6 large eggs
- A splash of white vinegar
- 3 full English muffins, split into 6 halves
- Additional butter for toasting in the pan