Recipes to Rival: Thank George's Bank

For our second installment of Recipes to Rival, Belita of Culinary Adventures a very interesting dish called Thank George's Bank.  When I first saw the name, I thought perhaps it was going to be a fish dish.  And I was right!  This is a cod cake recipe topped with a poached egg and a hollandaise sauce.  Its also supposed to be a breakfast recipe which makes sense with the poached egg but I ended up eating it for dinner.  Breakfast for dinner!

Like I said in my post yesterday about the Smoked Salmon Spread, I'm not a big fish person.  I was probably more wary coming into this dish than the salmon spread because I haven't eaten cod before and I wasn't sure of the taste.  But I'm determined to stick as close to the recipe as possible so I forged ahead anyway.

The batter for the cakes came together pretty easily but it was really soupy.  

I attempted to  fry up a batch of the cakes right after I made it and when I attempted to flip them, they fell apart.  I tried several times to get a nice patty but none would work.  I managed to get one nice patty by taking the rejects and molding them together.  It held up better this time since most of the liquid was gone.  

This was my first hollandaise sauce made from scratch.  Before I started this challenge, the sauce was what I was most nervous about.  Hollandaise sauce has always seemed so fragile and difficult.  Very temperamental.  I needn't have worried because it blended together quickly and didn't separate even though it set longer than I intended (see above paragraph...;) ).  

The poached egg took two tries.  The first time, it stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.  Not cool.  The second time came out better.  I overcooked it (to my taste) just a bit.  I like my yolks runnier and this one was just a tidge to set for me.  Oh well.  I wasn't going to waste more eggs.

After the difficulties I had with the cake and the eggs, I wasn't very optimistic on the taste of this dish.  Boy was I surprised!  The entire combination was delicious.  On its own, the cake was okay but nothing special.  What made the dish for me was the hollandaise sauce and the poached egg.  Delicious!  After I finished eating, I wished I hadn't thrown out my rejects!  I could have reformed them and had this again!  gah!  silly me!  Oh well, I will definitely try this again.  Next time I will refrigerate the cake batter (my grandma suggested this afterwards).

Thanks Belita for the great pick!  Check out the other Recipe to Rival bloggers for more Thank George's Bank!

Click here for the recipe!