Benedict...Eggs Benedict!

Eggs Benedict is an American breakfast dish that consists of two halves of an English muffin, topped with ham or bacon, poached eggs, and Hollandaise sauce.

There are conflicting accounts as to the origin of Eggs Benedict, including: In an interview recorded in the "Talk of the Town" column of The New Yorker in 1942, the year before his death, Lemuel Benedict, a retired Wall Street stock broker, claimed that he had wandered into the Waldorf Hotel in 1894 and, hoping to find a cure for his morning hangover, ordered "buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon, and a hooker of Hollandaise." Oscar Tschirky, the famed maître d'hôtel, was so impressed with the dish that he put it on the breakfast and luncheon menus but substituted ham for the bacon and a toasted English muffin for the toast.

A third claim to the Eggs Benedict fame was circuitously made by Edward P. Montgomery on behalf of Commodore E.C. Benedict. In 1967 Montgomery wrote a letter to then NY Times columnist Craig Claiborne and included a recipe he claimed to have received through his Uncle, a friend of the Commodore. Commodore Benedict's recipe - by way of Montgomery - varies greatly from Chef Ranhofer's version, particularly in the hollandaise sauce preparation - calling for the addition of "hot, hard-cooked egg and ham mixture."

Red Tie Cafe launched their new menu in December 2013, and added their take on the Eggs Benedict, now called a Breakfast burger! Using the English muffin as you would a burger bun, it is filled with a poached eggs, grilled tomato, hollandaise sauce, beef patty and then your choice of either ham, savoury beef mince or creamed spinach...

http://redtiecateringjhb.wozaonline.co.za/Menu
http://www.zomato.com/johannesburg/red-tie-cafe-bryanston/info#tabtop

The French Frie...or is it chips?

French fries (American |English) or chips, fries, finger chips, or French-fried potatoes are batons of deep fried potatoes. Americans and most Canadians refer to any elongated pieces of fried potatoes as fries, while in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, long, thinly cut slices of fried potatoes are sometimes called fries to distinguish them from the more thickly cut strips called chips.

French fries are served hot and generally eaten as an accompaniment with lunch or dinner, or eaten as a snack, and they are a common fixture of fast food. French fries are generally salted and, in their simplest and most common form, are served with ketchup; in many countries, though, they are topped instead with other condiments or toppings, including vinegar, mayonnaise, or other local specialities. Fries can also be topped more elaborately, as is the case with the dishes of poutine and chilli cheese fries. Sometimes, fries are made with sweet potatoes instead of potatoes, are baked instead of fried, or are cut into unusual shapes, as is the case with curly fries, wavy fries, or tornado fries.

Thomas Jefferson had "potatoes served in the French manner" at a White House dinner in 1802.

The expression "French Fried Potatoes" first occurs in print in English in the 1856 work Cookery for Maids of All Work by E Warren:

"French Fried Potatoes. – Cut new potatoes in thin slices, put them in boiling fat, and a little salt; fry both sides of a light golden brown colour; drain."

In the early 20th century, the term "French fried" was being used in the sense of "deep-fried", for other foods such as onion rings or chicken.

It is unlikely that "French fried" refers to frenching in the sense of julienning, which is not attested until after French fried potatoes. Previously, Frenching referred only to trimming meat off the shanks of chops.

Red Tie Cafe has recently added sweet potato as an option for fries...you can even mix potato and sweet potato fries! 

http://redtiecateringjhb.wozaonline.co.za/Menu

Did anyone say Hamburger?

The history of the Hamburger

The hamburger, a ground meat patty between two slices of bread, was first created in America in 1900 by Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant, owner of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut. There have been rival claims by Charlie Nagreen, Frank and Charles Menches, Oscar Weber Bilby, and Fletcher David.White Castle traces the origin of the hamburger to Hamburg, Germany with its invention by Otto Kuase. However, it gained national recognition at the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair when the New York Tribune namelessly attributed the hamburger as, "the innovation of a food vendor on the pike".No conclusive claim has ever been made to end the dispute over the inventor of the hamburger with a variety of claims and evidence asserted since its creation.

The Hamburger today

Hamburgers are usually a feature of fast foods restaurants. The hamburgers served in major fast food establishments are usually mass-produced in factories and frozen for delivery to the site. These hamburgers are thin and of uniform thickness, differing from the traditional American hamburger prepared in homes and conventional restaurants, which is thicker and prepared by hand from ground beef.

Burgers can also be made with patties made from ingredients other than beef. For example, a turkey burger uses ground turkey meat, a chicken burger uses ground chicken meat. A buffalo burger uses ground meat from a bison, and an ostrich burger is made from ground seasoned ostrich meat. A deer burger uses ground venison from a deer.

A veggie burger, garden burger or tofu burger uses a meat analogue, a meat substitute such as tofu, TVP, seitan(wheat gluten), quorn, beans, grains or an assortment of vegetables, ground up and mashed into patties.

At Red Tie we have many burger variations from the classic beef and chicken, to the ramen burger and a deep fried patty burger. This all served with hand cut fries or a fresh garden salad.

Visit us at Red Tie Cafe, Sandton View Shopping Center, 82 Homestead Avenue, Bryanston, South Africa

http://redtiecateringjhb.wozaonline.co.za/