This is a very tasty breakfast/brunch item that is off the beaten path just a touch. We had it for dinner and loved it. You will, too. 🙂
Of late I have been rather uninspired. I really don’t know why. It’s just been one of those things. We had seen some beautiful coho salmon at the market a few days earlier, so we bought it. I then made another batch of my jalapeño gralax because we like lax and bagels on the weekends. So, I had 2 sides of salmon made into gravlax. It’s pretty tasty stuff and freezes beautifully which is why we make 2 sides at a time. Most of the time we usually slice it and have it for breakfast. This time, however, it was finished in the afternoon and it was nearing dinnertime. I really didn’t feel like cooking and was having one of those uninspired evenings trying to figure out dinner when it dawned on me – Everyone loves eggs and every now and then we have breakfast for dinner. Pretty simple meal with no fuss no mess. I had the beautiful gravlax. I also had purchased 2 gorgeous Hass avocados earlier in the week and they were perfectly ripe. So, that’s when it hit me. Why not do a Southwestern style Eggs Royale? Eggs Royal is a take off of Eggs Benedict but instead of using Canadian bacon, you use smoked salmon or gravlax. Given I had these fabulously ripened avocados, I opted to forego the typical hollandaise and make a nontraditional avocado hollandaise instead. Salmon and avocado play very nice together as does jalapeño and avocado. The light bulb went on and this is what we did.
Ingredients
- 6 eggs poached
- 3 English muffins
- 12 oz Jalapeño gravlax (recipe found here)
- 2/3 cup leeks (shallots would work, too, but we had leeks we needed to use)
- 2 cups dry white wine
- 1/2 cup white wine/champagne vinegar
- 2 Hass avocado
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tsp Hot sauce (we used Spicy Caribe Habanero sauce)
- 2 lemons, juiced
- salt, to taste
- 1/4 cup water
Instruction
Put leeks in a small sauce pot.
Add white wine.
Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by 75%. You really want to concentrate the flavors.
Pour into the food processor.
Add the hot sauce
oil
salt
Add avocado.
Process until smooth.
add lemon juice
Process again and taste. If it is too thick, add a little water to it to thin it to your desired consistency. Adjust salt and hot sauce as necessary. Set aside until ready to serve.
Now, poach the eggs – roughly 90 seconds depending upon how done you want your eggs. I like mine soft and runny.
While eggs are poaching, assemble the base. First, place the toasted English muffins on plate and layer 2 oz. jalapeño gravlax on each English muffin half.
Place poached egg atop jalapeño gravlax.
Top with the avocado hollandaise.
Sprinkle with Chile Powder
Serve with some roasted white asparagus & enjoy. 🙂
REMCooks 
Oh my gosh, I am drooling! You’ve taken all the ingredients I adore and made a masterpiece! 🙂
Thanks Kathryn. This was a fun and tasty meal that everyone enjoyed, even the galley slave who cleaned up after me. 😀
yummy ! 😀
Thanks. 🙂
Yum
>
Thanks. 🙂
Remind me to tell you about my recent smoked salmon adventures. I am having fun but I can’t yet post anything. This looks fantastic. Smoked salmon and poached eggs is a big favourite. A lovely twist.
Conor, I won’t forget although now I’m very curious. You always have a great story to tell so I’m sure it will be fun. I haven’t tried “smoking” the salmon but have purchased all of the material to make a feeble attempt when it gets kinda cold this winter. Hopefully, you will give me some insights. 🙂
I’m intrigued that you freeze gravlax Richard. We love it and I don’t make it as often as I would like because we can’t eat quickly enough. Does it keep it’s silky texture? Eggs, avocado and salmon…..wonderful.
Hi Sandra, Yes, we freeze it. During this time of year the salmon is running in the Northwest. As a result, I can get some incredibly good buys on coho salmon, i.e. $11/lb fresh, wild caught. Each side weights roughly 1.5 – 1.75 lbs. So, you have 3 – 3.5 lbs total weight. After curing for 48 hours, you’re left with 1.5 – 2.25 lbs gravlax. So, the actual cost is roughly $20 – 22/lb. Typically, smoked salmon runs $26 – 29/lb and it has a lot of preservatives other than simple sea salt and sugar. So, this is a pretty good deal although it is by no means cheap. You can make it with the cheaper farmed atlantic salmon ($6.00/lb) but you can really taste the difference and the fattiness isn’t the same. I vacuum seal one side and freeze it while we eat the other. It keeps up to 3 months in the freezer beautifully with the same silky texture and unctuousness. One of these days I’m going to finally post a gravlax cheesecake with a green salad that is a perfect lunch or light dinner.
Bargain prices for salmon are rare here, wild salmon non existent, but our farmed salmon from the cold waters of Tasmania is excellent. I only ever make gravlax for a crowd, but knowing it freezes well will change that. Thanks Richard
Oh, I love your avocado-leek hollandaise! Fabulous!!! A lovely meal, Richard, for breakfast, lunch, or dinner!
Thanks Mimi. We really loved it.
This is a hell of a dish. Wow.
Thanks Virginia. We liked it a lot and was a fun variation. We have been using the avocado hollandaise as a spread for sandwiches, too. It goes great with a seared ahi tuna sandwich with some fresh cucumbers, sprouts and pickled cherries on the side. 🙂
I bet it is fabulous with the tuna!
Hi Richard, this looks great and I’m pretty sure it tastes great as well. For me it is a bit strange to call something Hollandaise when it doesn’t have butter in it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t delicious (as well as easier to prepare and healthier than the real thing).
Last Saturday I had some friends over for dinner. She has Indonesian roots and I was a bit nervous about serving Indonesian food, but they loved it. Moreover, they were surprised that I now eat (and prepare) food that is much more spicy hot than a couple of years ago. I wonder who’s responsible for that? 😉
Stefan, you make me laugh. 😀 Thanks for the compliment. You would like this a lot. Given you like your food a little hotter I might have to spice it up a tad more for you. 😉
To me, it’s not the butter but how can you have Hollandaise without eggs? It’s one of the mother sauces built upon eggs. For the same reason it also isn’t mayonnaise or aioli. I already had done an avocado cream (of course, this didn’t use cream). So, this presented somewhat of a conundrum, especially considering it was going to be my spin on Eggs Royale which uses hollandaise. So, avocado hollandaise it became. It really is good, too. The recipe makes between 375 – 500 ml (a little over 1 pint) so there is a lot leftover if you’re only feeding 3 people. Daniel opted to go visit a friend rather than eat at home that night so he doesn’t know what he missed. There’s a reason we call him Knothead. 😉
The leftovers make a killer sandwich spread, especially with seared tuna. I should have taken photos of that sandwich and posted it but…Maybe another day.
Hope you and Kees are doing well.
What an complex mix of amazing flavors…and the jalapeno gravlax is really interesting.
Thanks, Peri. This was a fun dish to prepare and really tasty. We love eggs on the weekend (even though this was a dinner 😮 ) and Southwest Style Eggs Royale was a nice way to do something completely different. You should try the jalapeño gravlax if you like chiles. It adds very little heat but lots of flavor. I bought this fresh, wild caught, coho salmon on sale for $11/lb. The sugar, herbs and jalapeños add another $1.50. After curing and loss of water and skin, you have probably a 50% yield. I do two 1.5 lb. sides (filets); so, I get 1.5 lbs of incredibly tasty, fresh gravlax with no preservatives (other than salt and sugar) for $34.50. Given gravlax/smoked salmon typically runs $27 – 29/lb, this is a pretty good deal. Tonight we took 7 oz. and made a gravlax cheesecake with a nice green salad for dinner.
The math makes it so much more convincing, good quality gravlax can really set you back, plus the yummy jalapeno flavors would be missing. Oh, the gravlax cheesecake sounds amazing!
The cheesecake is now posted. 🙂
I’ve always been really skeptical about poached eggs, but the avocado mix sounds really good 🙂