by Prue Leith from Bliss on Toast (Bloomsbury)
Photography: Haarala Hamilton
This is the gourmet version of bubble and squeak. Very rich and fattening, but irresistible. You can buy hollandaise sauce in a jar; it’s not exactly like the real thing, but it’s good all the same.
Ingredients
2 streaky bacon rashers dripping, oil, or butter for frying
140g boiled and mashed potato (leftover is fine)
handful of cooked cabbage, or any leftover green vegetables, roughly chopped
2 thick slices of white bread
2–3 tbsp store-bought hollandaise sauce (or see tip, below)
a little milk, if needed
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Fry the bacon in a little fat until it is crisp all over. Lift out the rashers, allow to cool, then chop them up.
Mix the potato, green vegetables and bacon bits together. Taste the mixture and add salt and pepper as necessary. Shape into 2 patties each about 2.5cm thick.
Fry the slices of bread on both sides in the bacon pan, adding a little more fat if needed, then put them on separate warm plates. In the same pan, fry the potato patties gently to brown both sides and heat through. Put them on top of the bread.
Spoon over the hollandaise sauce. (You may need to thin it with a little milk to get it to a just-pouring consistency.) Grind a little pepper on top.
TIP
If you’d like to make your own hollandaise, there are instructions for 2 methods (by hand and with a blender, see below).
Hollandaise Sauce
By hand:
Put 2 large egg yolks and 1 tsp white wine vinegar into a small heatproof bowl set over (but not touching) just-simmering water. Whisk as you slowly add, drip by drip, 150g melted butter. The sauce will gradually thicken. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice.
In a blender:
Blitz 2 large egg yolks and 1 tsp white wine vinegar together, slowly pouring in 150g melted butter in a thin stream while the machine is running. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice. If you curdle the hollandaise (which you won’t if you pour slowly), there is nothing for it but to start again with another egg yolk and gradually add the curdled mixture to it, beating all the time.
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