Eggs Woodhouse from Archer / excessively luxurious eggs sardou, in memory of George Coe

This summer I've been working in the UK and have been thinking of cooking projects to take advantage of great, readily available and relatively cheaper food items around here.  One thing I noticed is that Iberian ham/pata negra ham/Jamón Ibérico is super common here, available for purchase even in ASDA stores (basically the UK Walmart equivalent, actually owned by Walmart), for around $10 for a tray. The first dish that came to mind using pata negra ham was Eggs Woodhouse, which is referenced on the hilarious TV show Archer (see the recipe here, and an informative video starring Alton Brown here). Sadly, while completing the project, I read that George Coe, the voice actor for the dish's namesake, Woodhouse, had passed away. A real shame, a great actor and one of my favorite characters on the show.

Many of the other luxury ingredients of Eggs Woodhouse (black truffle, saffron, caviar), are also known to be expensive as well, however strangely enough some of these are also readily available and cheaper in the UK.  For instance, both saffron and caviar (admittedly not beluga caviar) are available at Waitrose stores for only around $3-4 each.

Sorry, have been messing with using filters. Left: artichokes and lemon water ready, Right: halved artichoke rubbed with lemon

Preparing fresh artichoke bottoms is definitely the most annoying part of this recipe, since the prickly artichokes need to be pared down quickly and constantly rubbed with lemons, before steaming for 10-20 minutes, otherwise they turn an unappetizing brown.  There are some helpful videos out there on how to do this.  I was also surprised to see whole artichokes, which I don't see often, also sold at Waitrose.

Left: A few last whisks on the hollandaise sauce before seasoning and adding paprika. Center: Creamed spinach topped with steamed artichoke bottoms and pata negra ham draped poached eggs. Right: Covered in shaved black truffle and hollandaise

There are many shortcuts out there for hollandaise sauce.  I went with Alton Brown's techniques for egg poaching (seriously, that's like eggs 101, Woodhouse!), although mine came out a big uglier this time, and for creamed spinach I more or less followed the original recipe above.  Tasted pretty good, although as expected, the saffron and caviar are a bit unnecessary.  To save more money, I'd say just go with prosciutto, coppa, or tasso and cut the truffle, saffron, and caviar. If you're willing to splurge, I would however recommend getting a nice quality truffle and possibly supplementing your hollandaise with truffle oil and saffron (crush ~1/4 tsp saffron, soak in a very small volume of hot water, ~1 tbsp, and incorporate this in place of the water in the above hollandaise recipe - haven't tried, but I think it'd work).