New Meal Monday: Salmon Benny

Often, when looking for inspiration for New Meal Monday, we look to see if there are any silly food related "holidays" coming up.
So, Happy National Eggs Benedict Day!
While I love a good classic Eggs Benedict, I typically don't order it when out for breakfast, and never make it at home.  Not because it's not delicious, but because I'm someone that has to be a little conscious of trying to eat "heart healthy". So, while there's a lot of good that comes with eating eggs, the current thinking is that about an egg yolk per day is a healthy average. So, when I think about the eggs and the hollandaise sauce, I start getting in my head about how many more days this week I can eat eggs.  So this got me thinking, could I make a slightly healthier, but still delicious Eggs Benedict.
Well, the first thing I thought of was potentially substituting the ham for some salmon.  This immediately made me think of one of my favorite breakfast dishes, which is the Popover Breakfast at Mirabelle's Cafe,  So using that as inspirations I used an chive and citrus creme fraiche sauce to top the eggs instead of hollandaise sauce.
So, I might have failed making this healthier, because I'm not sure using a heavy cream-based sauce is a healthier alternative. However, I think we did succeed in making a delicious Eggs Benedict-inspired breakfast!
Poaching an egg can be a bit tricky.  There's wide variety of tools and gadgets designed to help people poach eggs, but if you don't have any of these, I found this description to be the most thorough.  However, I used this gadget from OXO and it worked great! 

What you'll need:

• 4 slices fresh bread (we used french bread from August First)
• 4 eggs
• 2 thin slices smoked salmon
• 1 Tbsp Buttermilk
• 1C heavy cream
• 1 tsp finely sliced chives
• 1/4 tsp lemon juice
• salt & pepper

How you'll do it:

Make the Creme Fraiche in advance:

1. Combine Buttermilk and Cream in a saucepan and warm slowly till temperature reaches 85 degrees.  Pour into a clean glass jar and store at room temperature, partially covered, for 24hrs.
2. Stir and refrigerate additional 24hrs.  (should keep up to 2 weeks).
3.  Take about a 1/4 Cup of creme and mix with lemon juice, chives, a little bit of salt and pepper.

Making the Salmon Eggs Benedict:

1. Place a slice of salmon on each slice of bread.
2. Poach eggs to desired hardness using preferred method referenced in intro (but yolk should stay soft and at least slightly runny).  
3. Place one poached egg on top of each slice of salmon and bread.
4. Spoon Chives and Creme Fraiche over each egg to taste.