Eggs - the modernist way

Eggs are simple. Fry, boil, poach or scramble. Everybody have done it. Perhaps not poaching, but still. But perhaps there are better ways? As some may have read elsewhere in these chronicles, I have been bitten by the modernist cuisine bug and that has set me on a quest to find new and possibly improved ways of making the dishes that we know and love. Or not love. Scrambled eggs, for instance, is a dish that may be delicious or may be terribly dry and boring. I have especially had scrambled eggs from hotel breakfast buffets that I have doubted having been near hens at all. Good scrambled eggs should be light and creamy with a god egg taste. Not dry or pudding like.

Recently, one of my local TV stations here in Norway has been showing "How to cook like Heston". For any layman reading this, Heston is Heston Blumenthal, one of the best know chefs from the modernist kitchens. He runs his fantastic restaurant called The Fat Duck. To get a feel for what this restaurant is all about, have a look at these videos on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbviDzQmtbY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3REallhBz4

Unbelievable. I just need to go there some day. Anyway, the second episode of "How to cook like Heston" was all about eggs. What Heston does is to go outside the box to find new ways of perfecting his dishes. This involves using other techniques than you may be familiar with in order to achieve a better texture or flavour. All the recipes from the series can be found using this link:

http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/tv-show-recipes/how-to-cook-like-heston-recipes

Scrambled eggs á la Heston

I tried the scrambled egg variant where the eggs are cooked slowly in a bain-marie. The eggs came out wonderfully light and creamy. I cut the recipe in half, and that seemed to have an impact on the cooking time as well. The recipe calls for 15-20 minutes of cooking, but after about 7 minutes, my eggs took on a suitably consistency, so I took them off the heat and served.

I also tried out his way of making a soft boiled egg, but I must confess that the result reminded me suspiciously much of all other soft boiled eggs I have had in my time. I need to research that one more.

Omelet with French scrambled eggs and shiitake marmalade

For a more involved egg recipe I tried a variant of the omelettes on pages 144-149 in the book Modernist Cuisine at Home. The book has a rather complicated recipe which is also online here:

http://modernistcuisine.com/recipes/striped-mushroom-omelet-2/

Now, this recipe has an omelette with stripes of mushroom puree. I chose to not do the stripes this time to simplify things a bit. The omelette itself has eggs, extra yolk and heavy cream and salt.

It is cooked by first heating a pan and a lid in the oven, then pouring the egg mixture into the pan, and let it set in the oven with the lid on. This produces a rather flat, circular omelette. This was filled with shiitake marmalade (page 151 in the book) and the egg foam from the recipe in the link above. The marmalade is shiitake mushrooms finely chopped and  fried with butter, shallots, water, soy sauce and honey to a marmalade consistency that had a deep umami mushroom taste.

The foam calls for the egg mixture to be cooked sous vide. I have one of those vacuum machines where you stick the end of the bag into the machine and it sucks all the air out. In that process it will of course also suck out any liquids, so using that method to take the air out of the bag filled with the egg mixture would produce an empty bag and a ruined machine. In order to get the air out of bags with a runny contents, I learnt that a bag with a zip-lock is needed. Fill the bag and submerge it in water. As the water rises outside the bag, it will drive out the air. When just the zip-lock is above the water, close it and you have a nearly air free bag.

My sous vide bath was occupied with the main course (leg of lamb), so I had to make a make-shift manual one in my sink. I filled my smallest sink with hot water and popped in my oven thermometer and adjusted the temperature to 72 degrees. Then I had to manually add more hot water as the water cooled down. This, of course, did not make a very accurate system as you can see from the picture, but I managed to keep the temp reasonably within limits for the 35 minutes required.

The finished egg mixture was then added to a 0.5 l ISI whip which I loaded with one cartridge. I then kept the canister in the water bath (cooler than 72 degrees) until needed. I filled the omelettes with the shiitake mixture, piped out some of the foam, added some chives and rolled them together. I can report that my little starter had a very good and clean egg taste with the mushroom giving it depth and it was all very well received by my guests. I think this will be one of my favourite starters for the oversee-able future.