Week 5 - Breakfast / Egg Cookery

Objective

To understand the preparation and serving of breakfast dishes. This includes the preparation of a variety of egg dishes, and eggs themselves done many different ways.

Sanitation and Safety

None of the foods prepared this week are generally reason for concern. Batters are prepared from relatively benign ingredients, and the results are not considered potentially hazardous foods. Eggs do have the potential for having come into contact with salmonella previously, but this concern is resolved by safe handling of food including proper hand washing, and the appropriate cooking temperatures being observed when preparing dishes.

Information

In week five we prepare some batter based breakfast dishes, pancakes and crepes. We also prepare a Quiche Lorraine, along with a Fritatta. Along with these, many egg dishes are prepared, which are French Toast, a French Omelet, and Shirred Eggs with ham. Eggs themselves are prepared as:

• Poached
• Scrambled
• Over Easy
• Over Medium
• Over Hard
• Soft Boiled
• Hard Boiled

Key to egg cookery is to ensure that eggs are cooked an appropriate amount of time. Obviously, under-done eggs are not appealing, so they need to be cooked well enough. However, eggs cannot be overdone or they will quickly take on a rubbery texture and lose their fresh and light appearance. When cooking an egg in a pan, it is important to not let the egg pick up too much colour. An omelet should remain light, perhaps with a slight darkening. Scrambled eggs should not have any colour and be moist and fluffy.

Practical

Our practical time this week is cut in half by our mid-terms. However, as breakfast dishes are generally not large time consumers, we are able to move through quite a few dishes in one afternoon class.

We start with pancakes and crepes. We start by preparing our crepe batter as it is best when it has had time to sit for approximately an hour. We mix together eggs, egg yolks, water, milk, sugar, salt, flour, and melted butter, ensuring that an even consistency is found without over-whipping the batter. We cover it and place it aside in the fridge to sit for an hour. Once it has sat, we heat a small crepe pan and pour the batter in so it just coats the pan. The crepe cooks quickly, and once set and light brown it is flipped over to cook a few seconds longer. It is removed from the pan and ready for service.

Pancake batter is made by mixing bread flour and pastry flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, beaten eggs, and melted butter together. This batter comes out slightly lumpy but should remain this way - if over-whipped it will start to lose it's lightness and the pancakes will not turn out as well as they could. The batter is ladled into a warm pan coated lightly with vegetable oil, cooked until bubbles appear on the top and flipped. Once the bottom is browned the pancake is ready for service.

Our Quiche Lorraine is prepared by first lining a pan with prepared shell pastry and cooking it until it starts to fluff, to ensure that it will have an even doneness after cooking with the rest of the quiche ingredients. Once done, we prepare diced onion and bacon by sautéeing it and then allowing it to cool. Once cool, this is placed into the pastry along with some cheese. We prepare some egg whites beaten to a peak and fold this into a a mixture of flour, milk, cream, egg yolks. This is poured over the ingredients in the pastry, and then placed in the oven to bake for approximately 25 minutes. It is then ready for service.

The Frittata is started by sautéing mushrooms in butter until tender, and then adding chopped jalapeno pepper. We add some diced roasted pepper, green onions, and cilantro and sauté until hot. Some beaten eggs are added and this mixture is cooked evenly by lifting the eggs periodically to allow uncooked egg to flow beneath. Once they have begun to set, cheese is sprinkled over the eggs, and the dish is placed in a salamander to finish cooking. It is then ready for service.

The omelet is a similar procedure to the frittata, but we fold the egg when it begins to set instead of allowing it to set flat. Meats and vegetables are cooked or blanched before starting the omelet. Eggs are whisked together and seasoned, then poured into a pan and stirred until they begin to set. The cooked egg is pulled from the edge of the pan to the center allowing raw egg to run underneath and cook. After the egg begins to firm up, the filling and garnish is added, and the omelet is folded as desired. It can be turned over and cooked if additional time is required. The omelet should not have excessive colour, and the insides should be very soft when finished.

French toast is made by whisking together eggs, cream, salt, and some cinnamon to taste. This is placed in a shallow pan and thick bread slices are soaked in the mixture. They are cooked in a heated pan until well and evenly browned on each side, and then ready for service.

Shirred eggs are prepared by lining a small dish with thinly sliced baked ham. An egg is broken and poured into the dish without breaking the yolk. This is seasoned with salt and pepper and placed in an oven to bake until it begins to set. We then add cream and grated cheese and return to the oven to finish cooking. The dish is ready when the egg is cooked and the cheese has melted, and should be served immediately.

Poached eggs are prepared directly in lightly boiling water. Vinegar is added to the water which will help the eggs keep their shape when they are added. The eggs are cooked until the desired doneness is reached.

Scrambled eggs are prepared by whisking together eggs and milk and seasoning to taste. The egg is poured into a heated pan and stirred continually while it cooks. The eggs are done when they have set and are still moist and fluffy. They should not be overcooked to avoid colour or firmer texture.

Personal Observations

We ate a lot of eggs this day in the kitchen, but they were all prepared differently and I wasn't bored of the taste at the end of the day. Shirred eggs was a new experience for me and a very tasty dish, and simple to prepare. Ours was slightly undercooked so I will definitely keep cooking time in mind next time I prepare this dish.

The crepes were slightly intimidating, and are very fragile. However, once I was used to how they behaved it became relatively easy to cook them and they were very tasty.

Our french toast was excellent, although I often prepare this dish for myself already so I knew what to expect. Our pancakes were very good as well.

It was nice to learn how simple it is to prepare a quiche or a frittata, both wonderfully flavourful dishes and easily modified to whatever ingredients are on hand. I will be preparing these more often myself now that I know what is required.

Chef's Observations

For the most part Chef's observations were positive this week. Cooking eggs to the appropriate doneness is the primary issue that came up with our dishes.

Our quiche and frittata came out very well, as did our pancakes. Chef said our crepes could have used a little more colour, but otherwise were presented well, and had a good texture and flavour.

As I expected, our french toast was spot on. Chef said our poached eggs and shirred eggs were both slightly undercooked, but otherwise done very well. There weren't many other criticisms of our work on breakfast dishes.

Blog Notes

Mid-terms are over and I think I did a pretty kick-ass job on most of them. I guess I'll have to wait and find out!