Eggs Benedict is a popular Mother’s Day or Father’s Day brunch entree. The classic recipe combines a poached egg and ham or Canadian bacon atop a toasted English muffin slice, topped with hollandaise sauce.

There are many variations to the original recipe, including portabella mushrooms for vegetarians (recipe) and corned beef hash (recipe).

Since today (April 16th) is National Eggs Benedict Day, here’s a festive recipe to try in advance of upcoming celebrations. You can serve it for lunch or everyday dinner as well.

> The history of Eggs Benedict is below.

> More creative Eggs Benedict recipes.

> The year’s 10 egg holidays.

> The year’s 116 breakfast holidays.

> The different types of eggs: a photo glossary.
 
 
RECIPE: SURF & TURF EGGS BENEDICT

Ingredients For One Serving

 
Preparation

1. PREPARE or heat the hollandaise sauce; cook the Canadian bacon or heat the ham.

2. POACH the egg and toast the muffin half. Place the beef atop the muffin, followed by the seafood and the egg. Spoon the hollandaise sauce on top.

3. GARNISH with fresh herbs and serve with an optional side of asparagus or other vegetable.

[1] Surf & turf Eggs Benedict (photo © Bonefish Grill).

[2] Classic Eggs Benedict (photo © Gaby Brasserie | NYC).

Credit for this recipe is given to Chef Charles Ranhofer of Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City—which also happened to be the first restaurant opened in the U.S., starting with a small pastry café in 1827 and expanding into a restaurant two years later.

At that time there were no public dining rooms or restaurants. Men could stop into a tavern for a beverage and what amounted to “bar food.” People ate all their meals at home or, if traveling, at the inn or hotel. Otherwise, hungry people got food from street vendors.

In the 1860s, a regular patron of Delmonico’s, Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, arrived for lunch and found nothing appealing on the menu. She discussed her tastes with the chef, who created on the spot what would become an iconic recipe. In his cookbook, The Epicurean, published in 1894, he called the recipe called Eggs à la Benedick, inadvertently misspelling her name.

The recipe is relatively easy: toasted English muffins topped with a round of cooked ham “an eighth of an inch thick and of the same diameter as the muffins one each half.” A poached egg is placed atop each each muffin half, and the whole is covered with Hollandaise sauce.

The dish became very popular, and April 16th was established as National Eggs Benedict Day.

You can vary the ingredients to make your own signature Eggs Benedict recipe. Here are some substitutions.
 
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

Now there’s a name that can get the juices flowing—or not. Some varieties have no sting or burn*; those that do can be neutralized by soaking in water, blanching or cooking.

Nettles are slightly bitter green herbs that taste a bit like spinach with a cucumber accent. Not all of the varieties are prickly (stinging). Those that are get picked with gloves, and soaking or cooking eliminates the sting.

Other names are common nettles and wild nettles.

An herbaceous perennial flowering plant native to Asia, Europe, northern Africa and North America, nettles sprout up very briefly in early spring and late fall, growing like weeds at the edges of cultivated farmland.
 
 
HOW TO SERVE NETTLES

Like most herbs, nettles are good for you, rich in calcium, iron, manganese, potassium and vitamins A and C. They have been called “seaweed of the land” because of their complete spectrum of trace minerals and soft, salty flavor.

 
They and other American creameries learned the trick from European cheesemakers. Nettles have long been added to Gouda by the Dutch. We’ve delighted in Beemster Gouda’s nettle flavor; although from a quick look at their website, it appears that they’ve pared back their flavored Goudas to garlic, mustard, red pepper and wasabi.
________________

*In the stinging varieties, hollow stinging hairs called trichomes on the leaves and stems inject three chemicals hen touched by humans and other animals: histamine which irritates the skin, acetylcholine which causes a burning feeling and serotonin. They produce a rash that can be treated with an anti-itch cream, aloe vera or baking soda. But the plant doesn’t do a good job of keeping us away: It has a long history of use as a medicine and food source. Further, you need to eat them before they begin to flower, which produces other compounds that cause stomach irritation. Dangerous food, indeed! If you’ve purchased a sweater that lists ramie on the contents label, it’s a fiber made from plants in the same family (Urticaceae) as nettles!

†The others include black pepper, cumin, burning nettle, burning mélange, foenegreek, garden herb, Italian herb, mélange, mustard yellow, onion/garlic, smoked and just plain Gouda.
________________

You can find many nettle recipes online. If you purchase a stinging variety, soaking them in water or cooking them eliminates the stinging chemicals from the plant. Then:

 
 
DANGEROUS FOOD TRIVIA

While your family and friends may raise an eyebrow when you serve them stinging nettles, nettles don’t even make the list of the top 10 dangerous foods that people actually eat.

Here they are. Fugu (blowfish) is on the list, but some of the others will surprise you.

Here’s a variation of the gin and tonic with a sprig of thyme, for tax time. It’s the creation of Q Tonic, an elegant, all natural* tonic water created to complement fine spirits.

RECIPE: GIN & TONIC WITH FRESH THYME

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Preparation

1. ADD the gin to a cocktail shaker. Add 3 sprigs of thyme and gently muddle. Add the ice and shake.

2. STRAIN into an ice-filled highball glass and garnish with a line wedge and sprig of fresh thyme.

†Fresh thyme should be stored in the produce bin of the refrigerator wrapped in a slightly damp paper towel. If you’re storing it for more than a day, put the damp towel with thyme in a plastic bag.

 
WHAT TO DO WITH EXTRA FRESH THYME

Don’t let fresh herbs dry out in the fridge; find something else to do with them. Thyme is a great partner many popular foods.

Thyme, like all fresh and dried herbs, should be added toward the end of the cooking process since heat can easily cause a loss of its delicate flavor. This is less of an issue with quick-cooking dishes like scrambled eggs, as opposed to long-cooking beans and stews.

There are some 60 different varieties of thyme. The variety typically found in U.S. markets is French thyme, also called common thyme, Thymus vulgaris. The upper leaf is green-grey in color on top, while the underside is a whitish color.

Check farmers markets for lemon thyme, orange thyme and silver thyme, or grow your own.

THYME TRIVIA

 
 
‡Thyme vinaigrette recipe: Crush a large garlic clove and add to 5 ounces extra virgin olive oil. Allow flavors to blend for an hour or longer. In a separate bowl, combine 1 tablespoon thyme, 1 tablespoon lemon zest, 1 tablespoon minced shallots,
2 tablespoons Champagne or white wine vinegar. Remove the garlic cloves and gradually add olive oil, stirring constantly with a whisk. Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Recently we joined a group for dinner at a French bistro.

Others dug into rilletes and onion soup hidden under a heavy layer of Gruyère, cassoulet and steak frites. We, still feeling guilty about all the Easter candy consumed pre- and post-holiday, opted for the steak tartare and moules marinière, steamed mussels.

As we devoured mussel after plump mussel, we pondered:

This is such an easy to make, better-for-you, delicious dish. Why do we no longer make it at home?

It turns out that our chief obstacle, sand, no longer exists.

Wild mussels can be quite sandy, requiring soaking after soaking. We lacked the patience for it, especially when after all the soaking we still bit into grains of sand.

But these days, most mussels don’t grow on the ocean floor; they’re farm raised, in bags that hang vertically on ropes above the ocean floor. They’re pretty sand-free. (Yay!)

All you need is a good fish store; and you can even find quality frozen mussels that do the trick (check out VitalChoice.com—no thawing required, just pop them in the pot).

 
Many Recipe Variations

After you’re comfortable with the basic recipe, you can go all out with seasonings.

Flex Mussels in New York City serves 21 different recipes, from the classics to cuisine-specific riffs from Indian (cinnamon, curry, garlic, star anise, white wine) to Thai (coconut broth, coriander, curry, kaffir lime, lemongrass, lime, ginger, garlic).

If you’re old enough to remember Alice’s Restaurant—the hit song, which begat the feature film and cookbook—Alice liked to vary her recipes. On steamed mussels, she commented:

“Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.”

Now, let’s get ready to make mussels!

HOW TO BUY & CLEAN MUSSELS

For dinner, figure two-thirds of a pound of mussels in the shell per person—more for hearty eaters. Leftover mussels are delicious the next day, either warmed or chilled with a green salad and vinaigrette.

Mussels and other some other bivavles (clams, cockles, oysters) are sold live, kept cold on ice. Unlike other seafood, once a bivalve is no longer alive, the flesh decomposes quickly.

Buy mussels with moist shells (not dry-looking) that are tightly closed, with no external blemishes. Western mussels have black shells. You may find New Zealand mussels, which have green shells and tend to be meatier.

Even if you buy farm-raised mussels, you may want still want to go through the classic rinsing process.

What about partially opened mussels?

Most people who cook bivalves know to discard these: They may be dead. But here’s a trick:

Tap them firmly a few times with a spoon or other implement. If they’re alive, they will slowly close their shells. If there’s no motion, consider them dead and toss them in the trash.

And definitely toss any mussels with cracked shells prior to cooking. Bacteria may have entered through the crack.

What if you’re not going to cook the mussels immediately?

You can keep the mussels for a few days if you place them in a bowl or other container in the coldest part of the refrigerator (generally the rear of the bottom shelf). First line the bowl with a plastic storage bag filled with ice resting on top. Cover with a damp paper towel.

Ingredients For 6 Servings

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE the first six ingredients (through the cayenne) in a large pot, and simmer until reduced to a half cup. Strain into a large pot and add the mussels.

3. MAKE the sauce: Add the butter and optional salt to the liquid in the mussels pot.

MUSSELS FRA DIAVOLO

Fra diavolo means “brother devil” in Italian, a nickname given to a Neapolitan guerrilla leader in his feisty childhood. The spicy-hot recipe was named in his honor. (The Italian word for mussels is cozza, plural cozze, pronounced CUT-sah and CUT-say).)

The recipe features marinara sauce (you can use tomato paste and tomato purée) and heat from crushed red pepper.

Here’s a recipe from Chef Jasper White.

In Italy, it is often served atop a dish of linguine.

So we weren’t surprised at how much we liked the new varieties, both comprising two swirled flavors:

 
The flavors are available now at Whole Foods Market locations nationwide, $4.99 per 14-ounce container. For more information visit CiaoBellaGelato.com.

We love ice cream and gelato* experience made us realize how truly wonderful a finet sorbet is. The emphasis is on “fine.”

While the gelato comforted us with its creaminess, the sorbetto woke our taste buds and made them dance. We felt not only happy, but lucky to be tasting such a wonderful incarnation of blueberries and passion fruit.

 
*In the U.S., there is no federal standard for gelato, so anything can be called gelato. However, here’s the difference between American ice cream and Italian-style gelato.

Mascarpone is often refer to as Italian cream cheese; but please, don’t think of this rich, lush, soft fresh cheese as anything resembling a brick of foil-wrapped cheese† filled with gum.

Made from cream, not milk, mascarpone is the richest fresh cheese, ranging in butterfat content from 70% to 75%. As points of reference:

 
Mascarpone is delicate in flavor, with a color not surprisingly like that of fresh cream. In the U.S., mascarpone is most often associated with desserts, especially the classic tiramisu or as a topping for berries.

Pronounce It Correctly!

Mascarpone may have the distinction of being the most misspelled and mispronounced cheese. Too many Americans call it “marscapone.”

The correct pronunciation is mas-car-POH-neh. It is not, let us repeat not, mar-sca-POH-neh.

The cheese is believed to have originated in the Lombardy region of Italy, in the late 1500s or early 1600s. Lombardy, in the northern part of the country (it includes the cities of Brescia, Cremona, Mantova, Milano and Sondrio), has a rich agricultural and dairy heritage.

The name likely derives from “mascarpia,” the local dialect term for ricotta, because both ricotta and mascarpone are made by very similar processes. Mascarpone could have been a glorious accident in the preparation of ricotta. No cheese starter or rennet is used in its production; the moisture is drained from heavy cream using a small amount of citric acid and finely woven cloth.

You can make it at home. Here’s a recipe.

†Philadelphia Cream Cheese, for example, consists of milk and cream, whey protein concentrate, salt, carob bean gum, xanthan gum and cheese culture.