Eggilicious

It was a week of eggs! haha...2 weeks ago actually. Eggs are my absolute favourites and I can have them anytime of the day. Nature designed eggs as the food source for developing chicks. But it also became an excellent food for us humans because of their high protein content, low cost and ready availability. I love its versatility. You can either serve it alone or as an ingredient in almost every cuisine under the sun. A quick eat I always have is a quick 2 min microwaved whisked egg. The aroma is simply heavenly.

How do you know if an egg is fresh? The most common way we know is to see if we could pick up with yolk with our fingers, thanks to Seng Choong for the tip. Another way is to see how runny the whites are. The fresher the egg, the firmer the whites. Also, notice the bubble in the membrane whenever we crack open the shell? The bigger the bubble in the membrane, the less fresh the egg. Proper storage of your eggs help to maintain its quality. Eggs should be stored at temperatures below 4 degree celcius and at a relative humidity of 70 to 80 percent. Eggs will age more during one day at room temperature than they will during one week under proper refrigeration. So now you know! Eggs stay happy in the fridge :)

So, lesson 4 was on eggs. And more eggs. It was the most eggy day I've ever had. First up! We did poached eggs. The trick to making perfect poached eggs is to grasp the proportion between water and vinegar. Yup! it's VINEGAR. Bring water to boil, add salt and vinegar, then crack an egg into a cup and carefully add it to the water. It's approximately 4tbsp of vinegar to 500ml of water. It's quite amusing to watch as the egg white envelops round the yolk (with a little help from Mr. Spoon) and forms a pretty little treasure bag. If your egg white become scattered when it hits the water, you need more vinegar. But if you add too much of it, your egg will taste sour. So balance is the key...

This is Hung. He's become our frontline warrior. Basically he gets to do everything first, commits all the mistakes and we learn from him. Hung, it's been really helpful. Thanks for reminding us it's important to remember the salt and pepper. Oh, but I must add, he made the most beautiful poached egg among the 3 of us (the first egg to ever go into the pot...) *Clap Clap*

Presenting to you....Tania, our dearest Egg "Opener", which to date, Francois is still teasing her about. While most of us cracks our eggs, she opens them :)

Our fluffy clouds of poached eggs. The runny yolks are what makes me salivate. We lower the eggs into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking and also to store it for future use. It comes in handy if you're cooking eggs for a whole bunch of people. This can be done an hour or two before, and then reheated in boiling water for about a min before serving.

Omelette! You can have almost ANY filling you want, anything you think can go with eggs. The key to a beautiful omelette is your ability to work the pan with your spatula and roll the omelette to envelop all its toppings without it breaking.

It comes with practise. It turned out that Hung's omelette was the most pretty looking one. Mine isn't even worth taking a picture of. Tania's was LOADED with good stuff. Oh I forgot to mention, our frontline warrior had the prettiest looking omelette... BUT he forgot salt and pepper. Well, we learn that sometimes looks are not everything...

It's serious business here.

We moved on to making egg benedictes. I remember watching The Prince and I and how the butler was cooking egg benedicte on a portable stove in a hostel room. Anyway, egg benedicte is typically poached egg serve on a toasted bagel with meat and greens, topped with hollandaise sauce. So here we are, making our own hollandaise sauce and as with most of the sauces we made, involved whisking...

and more whisking...

and more whisking....

Trust me, the smile was not a true reflection of the condition of my hands.

The therapeutic part

I need to get my hands on one of these. You can torch anyone... anything I mean.

My beautifully torched Egg Benedicte

Finally, we did a scrambled egg with smoked salmon. I always thought scrambled eggs was made with whisked eggs, but apparently the yolks are only beaten together with the white when it hits the pan. You can see the shreds of whites among the yellow. To make your scrambles a little smoother, add a splash of cream :)

For the first time, I had too much eggs.