Breakfast

Q: Do you know why a chef's toque (tall white hat) has so many folds?
A: Traditionally, there were 101 folds in a toque, 1 for every way to prepare eggs.

Q: Do you know how many ways you can prepare eggs in 5 hours?
A: We were able to prepare 10: poached eggs, hard cooked eggs, soft cooked eggs, sunny side up eggs, over easy eggs, omelets, quiches, frittatas, crepes and hollandaise. And we still had time for a lecture, clean up and a feast!

Now, just about everyone can make an egg breakfast. I was thinking that this class was going to be fairly unimportant or that I wouldn't learn much. After this class period, I realize that yes, I do know how to make most of these, but now I know a few tips and tricks for each to make them all a bit better.

I'm pretty sure most people are confident in how to make a hard cooked egg. 3 things I took away from this preparation:
1. Never boil them. They should be cooked in water that is simmering at 185-190° water.
2. There are 3 ways to cook them. Pick one and do it that way every time.
-Add the eggs to already simmering water (~10 min)
-Start the eggs in cold water and bring them to a simmer (~12 min)
-Add the eggs to boiling water and turn off the heat and let them sit in the hot water (~15 min)
3. Adding vinegar to the water keeps the egg white from expanding in the shell making it easier to peel.

Soft Cooked Egg = 3 min egg
Its' like a hard cooked egg but only cooked for 3 mins. The protein in the egg white coagulates but the yolk is still runny in the middle. Great for dipping toast!

Poached eggs are cooked 3-5 min using the same procedure as a hard or soft cooked egg. The easiest way to keep the egg together when adding it to the water is to break the egg into a cup or bowl and slowly lower it into the water.

Here is our plate of hard cooked halves and poached eggs. I whipped together a hollandaise sauce just before service and added it to the poached eggs. The crack in one of those poached eggs is from Chef Pierre. He opened it up to check and make sure that the yolks were still runny. They were; and they were delicious. I could have used some English Muffins and Canadian Bacon right about there too.

The trick with fried eggs is that if there is any color on the egg white, it has been overcooked. This becomes a time and temperature challenge when preparing. For example, for our over-easy eggs, Stormy had the 2 eggs sitting in the pan and were ready to flip. However, she couldn't muster up the courage to fling 'em. While preparing to do it, she waited too long and when we finally flipped it, they had started to brown. Even though, we managed to flip it without breaking the yolks, we didn't want to serve the browned eggs. So we tried again, this time, the pan had gotten hotter so the bottom cooked faster. So, when the bottom was ready to be flipped, the top was still too loose and when I flipped the eggs the yolks broke. 0 for 2 on Over Easy. We had a plate of "no-serve".

The sunny side up egg was a different story. This has to be cooked on low heat so that the bottom doesn't out-pace the top. The egg white has 2 parts: thin white and thick white. The thin white is the outer most part of the egg white and cooks quickly. That's the stuff that turns white as soon as it hits the pan. The thick white is the part of the egg white that
surrounds the yolk. That has to coagulate before the bottom of the thin white turns brown. In order to avoid another "no-serve" fried egg, we were very careful and very patient with our Sunny Side Up and it turned out really well.
Stormy got creative with our plating and wrapped the eggs with a "handle" of bacon creating a little Sunny Side Basket.

The omelet preparation taught me 2 new things too.
Most people when making an omelet use milk with the beaten eggs to help make them fluffier and then once the eggs are poured into the pan, the eggs sit still to form the disc. In our class, we used egg only. Chef Pierre demo'd an omelet and he kept moving and scrambling the eggs so that they puffed up and cooked all around. As they started to set, he set down his spatula and just shook the pan until the whole pan set. Then he flipped and rolled the omelet and served it upside down. so that you couldn't see the seam. It didn't need to be flipped because the eggs had cooked all the way through as he was moving them around in the pan. And because they had been moving, they were very soft and fluffy eggs. It was pretty awesome. The other thing to remember is that all of the ingredients for your omelet should be cooked before adding to the omelet. Eggs cook a lot faster than anything you're going to add to the omelet.

I have never made a frittata or crepes before. So the process was new to me for both. Bobby took control of the crepes and turned out some great looking ones. Crepes like most of the egg dishes are not supposed to have any browning. So… he just ladles in the tiniest bit of batter, just to coat the bottom of the pan and lets it set and flips it; a matter of minutes for each. With both of these items, each team was allowed a bit of freedom and creativity. The crepes were allowed to be filled and topped with anything and the frittata was allowed any number of ingredients as well. The frittata is a Spanish dish that’s a mix between and omelet and a quiche. First you sauté all of your ingredients in an oven-safe pan, pour the eggs over it and put it in the oven to finish. We used mushrooms, cheese, tomato and onion. I think that might be my new favorite egg preparation.


We filled our crepes with a cream cheese and sugar mixture and topped it with berries and powdered sugar; Stormy, again with great plating. I actually overheard Chef Pierre at the end of class talking about plating and he said that many of the groups went a little over-the-top with the garnish but pointed to our table as an example of good plating without over-garnishing. Boo-Yah!


And the last thing we made was Quiche Lorraine. Secretly, my mom has been making quiches since I can remember and there was nothing new about the preparation. Advantage me; thanks Mom. I let Bobby handle the quiche because I had nothing to gain by preparing it.

-- Rees