Didn't we have a lovely time….

| 23rd March 2015

Bees from the gallery‘Eggs Benedict is genius. It’s eggs covered in eggs. I mean, come on, that person should be the president.’*

*Wylie Dufresne

We were so pleased to have been invited, again, to the Country Living Spring Fair last week…
Sara was up at the Business Design Centre in Angel, Islington, for all five days of the show giving talks on Bee Keeping, Looking after Chickens in London and giving food demonstrations showing how to prepare your Garden Gathered Harvests. She also enjoyed a couple of ‘chat show’ style sessions in the Country Living Theatre as a special guest, along with Telegraph columnist and author Francine Raymond, being interviewed by the magazine’s features editor, Ruth Chandler.
The show was definitely a celebration of Spring; the huge glass ceiling of the venue allowing fresh streams of sunlight to highlight all the beautiful offering of the stalls and displays and we were privileged to have been based in the wonderful Lucy Summers Spring Garden at the very entrance to the fair. We had seen the illustration of the garden, see previous post, months ago, but to stand amidst the flowers, veg beds and blossoming trees was the most inspiring scene for our series of talks. As for the VW Camper, which was the talk of the show, she had more visitors, questions and opportunities for a new home than I could count! Lucy reassured everyone that she was definitely not for sale as she belonged to a friend who had lovingly restored her for his own use.

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Don’t be scared of the Hollandaise…

Our food demonstration was cooking one of our favourite meals of griddled asparagus, poached egg and hollandaise sauce, most of the ingredients can be foraged from our garden at springtime and, whilst delicious, is a very simple lunch, starter or supper dish.

Most of our audience loved the taste of hollandaise sauce but were too scared to try to make it themselves due to complicated recipes that involved vinegar reductions, skimmed melted butter and the fear of it curdling into a mess. Sara showed a simple method, shared with you below, that saved on time, utensils and washing up – easy on every front except the waistline!

Ingredients:

1 Egg yolk

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

Freshly ground black pepper

200g butter (room temperature)

Lemon juice (good squeeze from half a lemon)

Salt & pepper to season

Method:

  1. In a heat-proof bowl, whisk the egg yolk with the vinegar and a few twists of black pepper – this forms the basic emulsion.
  2. Place the bowl over a simmering pan of water, make sure the base of the bowl doesn’t touch the water and continue to whisk the contents.
  3. Add the butter, a teaspoon at a time, whisking until it dissolves, then adding another until all is incorporated.
  4. Finish with a generous squeeze of lemon juice and season with the salt and pepper.
  5. Delicious served with asparagus and poached egg, fish, eggs benedict, stir in tarragon and serve with steak… the list goes on!

Bread sweet and savouryComing up at the Corner – 20% off all courses booked by end April

If you’d like to visit us here in London, we have courses running right throughout the year. Families, Feathers and Fun is the next session coming up with a Spring Discount of £15 off each place. Closely followed by Intro to Bee Keeping and Bread: Sweet and Savoury We have many more courses available, both in the garden and the kitchen, the promotional code SPRING15 will give you 20% off all bookings before the end of April – Pass it on!

Other News:

  • Our old kitchen, including the ceiling and floor, has well and truly gone
  • Local schools are inviting us to support them as their children explore chickens and bees
  • Bookings are coming in for our new courses

Jobs for this week:

  • Get packing for our family holiday with Classic Glamping
  • Gather the chickens and head off to the Horniman Museum for their Chirpy Chickens event
  • Decorate some of our pretty eggs as Easter place settings

Have a good week yourself…Hen logo good

Join us on the Journey!

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4 comments

GreenEggs 24th March 2015 at 1:08 am

I love hollandaise sauce and love this technique you suggest. Will def give it a try. I’ve also seen where people make their hollandaise in a blender. Have you tried that before? Almost sounds too easy, doesn’t it?

Reply
hencorner 24th March 2015 at 8:53 am

I think the blender method still requires you melt the butter in a saucepan (washing up!) and I’m not sure how warm it would stay in a blender… It’s fine for mayonnaise though.
I’ve got a saucepan out for poaching eggs anyway, so popping a bowl on too for the sauce just makes sense!

Reply
Emily Scott 24th March 2015 at 6:13 am

Thanks Sara, Eggs Benedict is Drew’s favourite breakfast so I’ll have to try out this Hollandaise sauce!

Reply
hencorner 24th March 2015 at 8:57 am

Do it Emily! Just not too often as it’s got so much butter in it…
A handy hint if you are cooking more than a couple of poached eggs. Lightly poach two at a time, then drop into cold water to stop them cooking, whilst you poach the others… Then just before serving, warm up again in hot water and strain with a slotted spoon…

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