Back at school! Today was a pretty relaxed day. Between 8am and 9am, those of us in Hot Plate cleaned and stemmed spinach, grated cheese, mise en place'd the eggs, butter and fresh fines herbs for omelets for lunch.
Chef Lexie started her lecture on eggs and egg cookery. Eggs have been a stable food source since Egyptian times (this is the extent of what we covered regarding history of the egg!). Otherwise, hens begin laying eggs at age 20 weeks. Hens usually only lay one egg a day and for the most part are able only to lay eggs for a total of two years. The smaller the egg, the younger the hen. The larger the egg, the older the chicken (I guess it gets easier!). The color of the chicken's feathers determine the color of the egg shells. The hen's diet determines the color of the yolks (the better the diet, the darker or more orange the yolks). Brown eggs are not necessarily more nutritious than white eggs. Eggs in and of themselves, are nutritionally complete.
There are three main components to the egg:
1. Shell-the egg's first "defense" and weighs about 1/2 oz.
2. Whites-contains half the egg's protein and weighs about 1 oz.
3. Yolk-contains all the fat and all the nutrients as well as the other half of the protein (in other words, you are not doing yourself any favors when you only eat the egg whites!).
There are two tests that you can do to check for freshness in an egg-the buoyancy test and the spread test. An egg that is newly laid is heavy so when put in water, sinks and lies flat. As the egg ages, an air pocket explands and adds buoayancy. A week-old egg begins to rise. A three week old egg stands upright as the air pocket expands further. In a newly laid egg, the yolk is compact, the white is dense and there is a slight fluid outer layer. In a week old egg, the yolk moves off center, the white loosens and becomes more fluid. In a three week old egg, the yolk flattens and the white becomes thin like water.
Eggs have 9 properties:
1. Thickening (when used in custard)
2. Binder (when used in meatloaf)
3. Clarify (when we used eggs, mirepoix and ground meat as a "raft" to cleanse our consomme a few weeks ago)
4. Leavening (for cakes)
5. Adhering (used in the standard breading procedure to hold breading in place)
6. Emulsifying (egg yolks have lecithin that can hold water and oil together as in mayonnaise)
7. Glazing (as in egg wash to glaze a loaf of bread before baking)
8. Sealing (an egg wash can be brushed onto a tart dough to make a seal between the crust and the filling to keep both layers fresh)
9. Retards crystallization (used in sorbets and ice cream to prevent crystals from forming in the freezer)
Eggs should always be at room temperature before cooking. There are quite a few ways eggs can be cooked:
1. Hard boil eggs(For perfect hard boiled eggs, place the uncooked eggs in a saucepan just large enough to hold them in a single layer. Add cold water to cover by one inch. Bring to a full boil over high heat. Remove from heat, cover and let stand for the appropriate number of minutes (4 minutes for firm whites and yolks set with a liquid center. 7 1/2 minutes gives you whites that are all firm with yolks that are solid but looks wet. 10-12 minutes give you whites that are solid throughout with a solid yolk throughout.) Immediately remove eggs from pot and shock them in cold water. This produces a layer of steam between the egg and the shell which facilitates peeling.
2. Fried eggs
3. Poached eggs (In a shallow pot filled with water, heat the water until you see bubbles on the bottom of the pan-no rolling boil. Add a little vinegar to the water, it helps coagulate the whites. Cook until soft-the whites are set but the yolks are slightly runny. Remove with a slotted spoon and place them in a pan with an ice water bath. This can be done up to 24 hours ahead of time and the eggs reheated in the same pan you put them in for the ice bath.)
4. Baked eggs-en cocotte or baked in a ramekin or shirred-eggs with a little cream poured over them.
5. Scrambled eggs
6. Omelettes of which there are three kinds: Flat (frittata), Rolled or Furrey (rolled like a cigar then split down the middle and filled with a sauce)
7. Devilled eggs
8. Mimosa (and I'm not talking OJ and champagne!). You hard boil the eggs, then separate the yolks from the whites and push them thru a sieve. They can then be used for garnish.
9. Basted (baste with the oil or butter used in frying the egg to gently cook the top of the egg-sunny side up)
For lunch, we practiced making three egg omelettes, each of us making our own. We learned not to over cook the eggs and also how to roll them in the pan and onto our plates. GardeMo made Wilted Spinach Salad with Hot Bacon Vinaigrette and also put out Duck Confit they made last week. Hot plate made Crepe Parmentier (think thin potato latkes or potato pancakes-yum!). Pastry made Berry Galette, a rustic berry tart/pie and served it with Creme Anglaise laced with raspberry puree.
We ended up getting our early today. Although at one point, I went on a walk with Chef Dale looking for the delivery truck that had our spinach (that we had for lunch). It was actually nice having a one on one conversation with him. He asked how I was doing and was the program what I had expected it to be? I told him it was, that there were some things I needed to unlearn (we pick up bad habits so easily!). I also said a friend had asked me over the weekend if there was one particularly important thing I had learned. It took me a while to answer, not because I had nothing to learn but because Iwasn't sure if there was just ONE big lesson I had learned. And I don't put every little thing I learn into this blog-you and I would be here forever! I think learning to make the perfect stock and all the uses it has in cooking would be one of the biggest nuggets of insight into being a professional chef. That and learning to season at every step, layering flavors so that all your dishes have depth.
Carl made dinner for me tonight. One of these nights I am going to have to cook for him! He did a three course dinner for a couple tonight and decided he needed to make dinner for he and I at the same time. We had a banana/orange/avocado salad with poppy seed dressing, scalloped potatoes, steak on the grill and jalapino corn muffins. What a nice guy!
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