Poached Eggs

So, having made three fairly perfect poached eggs this morning, two being for me, one being for David Bowie Papillion, I've realized that there is a great deal in the freshness of an egg as it relates to poaching. There's no real mystery to it, the fresher the egg, the better it will become a nice round globe. You don't have to swirl the water, you don't have to drop the eggs in at a certain speed, you don't have to fuss too much about the temperature of the water, or the ratio or type of vinegar used. You just need fresh eggs and water heated over medium heat. If you do have a thermometer, the water should be heated to around 82 degrees celcius, and if you do decide to add vinegar, any will do, any it's probably something like 30ml for every 1L of water. Also, if you crack your egg into a small bowl, or something before pouring it into the water, it's much easier. But that's it, use fresh eggs to make great poached eggs.

Roasted Tomato Risotto

So, officially, my girl neither asked me to make this for her, nor did she actually eat any of it, nor was she even present while I was making it, or eating it, so really, this shouldn't be on this blog, but since this really is my blog, I'm putting it on. I did just make this, and just eat it, and it's about 10:30 in the morning. I enjoyed eating it for breakfast, but it would be just as nice at lunch, brunch, or dinner.

NICE!

Ingredients

1 Tomato
1 Clove Garlic
1 Tsp Hot Sauce
1 Tsp Avocado Oil
Salt and Pepper

1/3 Cup Scented Jasmine Rice
1/2 Tsp Dried Basil
Water as needed
25g Mozzarella Cheese (Roughly Diced)
White Truffle Oil to garnish

Directions

1. Wrap aluminum foil around a tomato and form a teardrop shape. Place in 400F oven and cook for about 30 minutes or until tender. Check periodically.

2. Crush tomato in bowl, removing some of the skin. Add garlic, hot sauce and avocado oil. Blend using an immersion blender, season, set aside.

3. Add rice directly to tomato mixture, stir until combined. Pour into cold saucepan, begin heating on medium heat.

4. Stir or shake saucepan to keep rice from sticking. Add water in small amounts when as moisture evaporates. V8 or tomato juice would work add more flavour, but would also mean more salt.

5. Cook until rice reaches desired tenderness, generally for risotto, the rice should still have some bite to it, but be somewhat soft as well. Add dried basil, season, stir.

6. Spoon into serving bowl, garnish with mozzarella and truffle oil.

Breakfast - Omelette And Homefries

So, because I had a chapati-fail this morning I made this instead. I was brimming with confidence after making decent Chapati on sunday just by eye, so I decided to make them again with a 1:1 mix of whole wheat and all-purpose. I followed a recipe that I already had, and they turned out too crisp. I might turn them into chips later as they turned out not soft or supple and I couldn't use them to make the breakfast wraps I wanted to make. And so, classic omelette and homefries happened.

I don't think I really need to provide a recipe here, instead just a few techniques that work for me (which I basically learned from watching Julia Child). See below.



"How about dinner in half a minute?" Will forever be stuck in my head.

Pre-cook wet ingredients and set aside to cool.

Add a tiny splash of cold water to the beaten eggs and pre-season.

Add the eggs to a buttered and oiled hot pan and cook just until coagulated then add ingredients and fold then tip the Omelette onto the plate from the frying pan.

The potatoes are pretty simple too. Peel, cut, place in bowl, coat with olive oil and spices. Pour onto lined baking sheet and place in 425F oven until desired level of done-ness achieved, turning throughout.

Breakfast - Fresh Bread and Peach and Orange Fruit Spread

I was semi-forced into getting an 8" metal roasting pan from the Sears Outlet store at the 404 shops. A depressing place that left me alone and silently weeping. At least the roasting pan helped make a nicely shaped loaf of bread.

Delicious.

Yay for E.D. Smith.

Breakfast - Oatmeal with Brown Sugar and Cinnamon, Banana, Strawberry Yogurt, and Dark Maple Syrup

So, I will be fortunate enough to be not staying at home on this Saturday and this will be the only thing I will probably make for her today. Which is good, because I don't think she likes it very much and I just saw her splash a bit of milk into it. I think I added too many sweet things... I guess this is an off-day...

Wow. This looks like it has a seeping wound.

Breakfast - Eggs Benedict with Bacon on Buttermilk Biscuits

I made this for her because I was flipping through Marco Pierre White's "Wild Food From Land and Sea" which I borrowed from the library, and found a Hollandaise sauce recipe on page 127 and had recently learned how to make delicious Buttermilk Biscuit from John Mitzewich's Foodwishes.com blog and I had some recently purchased bacon and eggs, so it seemed like a good fit. I think I've also had a need to make Eggs Benedict every once in a while after having really good Eggs Benedict at The Hoof Cafe with my girlfriend a while back. Which is apparently now closed, curious. I guess all the more reason to make Eggs Benedict. Anyway, here are the recipes in the order that I prepared them.

Buttermilk Biscuits

I happen to have a ridiculous 3HP Blendtec HP3A Blender which I used to help me make these. Since I haven't bothered to get a pastry blender yet (I also never really clued into what they were for when I saw them in stores), I don't know which would deliver better results. The recipe is slightly modified from John Mitzewich's to include the blender, it should be noted that his look, and probably taste better than mine. I cut them to size with an 8cm (3") ring-form. You should really watch John's video for how to knead them and form the dough. You should also really check out his blog. His recipes are really, really, really, really good, and he's funny.

2 Cups All Purpose Flour (260g)

2 Tsp Baking Powder

1/4 Tsp Baking Soda

100g Salted Butter, Diced.

200 ML of Buttermilk

1. Place the dry ingredients in the blender and pulse a few times to blend them. Add the butter and pulse until a fine crumb forms then dump into a mixing bowl.

2. Make a well in the centre of the crumbs and pour in the buttermilk and with a really big spoon or spoonish spatula mix the crumbs and buttermilk and try to roll into a sphere-ish dough.

3. Dump the sphere onto a floured worksurface (in my case, granite countertops) and gently "fold-knead" (kind of like folding a letter) about 3 times then roll out into a 1/2" thick rectangle then cut into biscuits.

4. Transfer the biscuits to a parchment lined baking sheet, press your thumb into the centre of the top of each of the biscuits, brush with buttermilk and place in a 425F oven for 20 minutes.

Bacon

While the biscuits are in the oven, take a sheet of aluminum foil, fold it in half, then form it into a rectangle with 4 vertical sides, kind of like a baking sheet, lay four slices of bacon into it, and place that in the oven with the biscuits. Depending on when you put the bacon in the oven, and how thick it is, and how crisp you like your bacon, it might be done before, at the same time, or after the biscuits, but just keep a mindful eye on it, then transfer to a bowl with paper towel when it's done.

Hollandaise Sauce

Marco Pierre White's Recipe is for a large batch, I converted some of the measurements and divided it by three for a smaller batch. I really only needed a few tablespoons of the finished sauce in the end.

1 Egg Yolk

30 ML of Water

10 ML of Lemon Juice

Pinch of Salt

Pinch of Cayenne Pepper

60g of Butter, diced

1. Whisk everything except the butter in a small saucepan till blended.

2. Add the diced butter. And put the saucepan on medium heat.

3. Whisk until the butter has melted and the sauce has thickened.

4. Reduce heat to low and leave covered while preparing the poached eggs.

Poached Eggs

I've had ups and downs making poached eggs, for a while I wouldn't make them at all because they kept turning out terrible. I think the problem was I was obsessed with swirling the water, (or putting the eggs into plastic wrap) which is really not necessary. But one day I was having breakfast at Sunrise Grill with my girlfriend and I ordered poached eggs because the restaurant has a completely open kitchen and I was at a table where I had a perfect view. The cook, cracked the eggs into a pot of boiling water one at a time, waiting maybe 10 seconds or so between eggs and just left them to boil. And a little while later, I was given a plate of three perfect teardrop shaped poached eggs. So, I realized that swirling the water is really not at all necessary, and making the eggs one at a time is really not necessary either. I guess it should be noted, he's probably extremely experienced at making breakfast and making poached eggs. He was using a tall windsor pan, and it probably had the perfect balance of vinegar and perfectly tempered water and he was probably using really fresh eggs. So, although my eggs are not perfect globes, or teardrops, they're better and simpler to make than they used to be.

1. Heat a large saucepan of water to about 82C.

2. Crack the eggs into the water, one at a time, waiting about 10 seconds between eggs.

3. Turn down the heat slightly and boil for about 3 minutes. Remove from water, drain, and plate.

4. Repeat for four eggs total.

Final Plating

2 Servings of 2 eggs each

1. Cut two biscuits in half and place two halves each on two serving plates.

2. Break each slice of bacon in half and place two halves in a cross on each biscuit.

3. Place the drained poached egg on the bacon and season with salt and pepper.

4. Spoon a couple of spoonfuls of hollandaise sauce onto each egg.

5. Top each egg with a little bit of diced green onion.