Eggs
We had finally moved on from vegetables to eggs – hooray, no more cutting (for a while)! – and Chef gave us a demonstration of basic egg recipes from poached, boiled, omelette to cocotte and a subsequent one on French scrambled eggs – several of which are techniques to be tested during the examination.
Here, I could really see the care and patience in French cooking. For example, each egg is broken into an individual ramekin prior to cooking. For poached eggs, a whirlpool is created in the simmering vinegar and water solution before gently sliding one egg at a time into the water. Continuing the whirlpool motion over a few minutes to let the egg envelop itself, it is placed in an iced bath next before the edges are trimmed for better presentation.
For French omelettes and scrambled eggs, the eggs are sieved prior to cooking to remove the umbilical cord and ensure smoothness. In the case of French scrambled eggs which needs to be cooked slowly over super low heat or over a Bain Marie (hot water bath), Chef literally leant over the stove with one elbow on the counter while the other hand gently draws the figure “8” with a spatula over the cooking eggs. Finished with butter – but of course, the result looks effortless and lightly-cooked with a creamy consistency.
Soufflé
Perhaps one of the most difficult egg dishes to master is the soufflé. A risen egg tower that collapses in 30 seconds once it is cooked, it can only be made just before serving and is often a dish to test culinary skills in cooking challenges. There are so many factors that can affect the end result from the freshness of the eggs; whisking technique; oven temperature; to even the greasing of the ramekins where extra care is taken.
A quick look at my notes showed eight egg yolks, nine egg whites and some 30 steps I had scribbled just for the recipe. Chef starts by carefully painting the interior of the ramekins with butter – the base, rim and the sides in upward motions to encourage rising – before dusting them with an even coating of sugar.
Eggs are separated – yolks whisked with sugar and mixed with flour, cornflour, milk and Cointreau; whites whisked with a pinch of salt before being incorporated into the yolk mixture together with more yolks, an orange reduction and Cointreau-marinated orange peel. The final mixture is then carefully ladled into the greased ramekins without touching the rim, levelled with a flat spatula and detached from the rim by running a thumb around the ramekin before baking in the oven.
It was our turn to make (or sink) soufflés. So important was the greasing of the ramekins that Chef asked to see them before we ladle in the final egg mixture.
After completing the preparation and placing our soufflés in the oven, my classmates hovered outside their ovens, faces almost pressed on the oven doors and anxiously monitoring the rise (if any) of their soufflés. “I’m so scared,” I overheard my classmate, a petite Mexican girl, whispering. Amused by their anxiety, I laughed and said “Relax. There is nothing you can do now.”
My soufflés didn’t quite rise to giddying heights and the first one was even slightly undercooked, but the second one did rise to an acceptable mid-rise level. Not too bad for a first attempt.
Quiche
It was quiche day. We made the crust by hand – first by “sablage” or rub-in method then “fraser” or smearing the dough; lining the tin; pinching the rim with pincers; and blind baking with baking beans with some classmates patching crusts that had cracked.
The filling was super easy to make – eggs, cheese, lardon (bacon) and milk – which is why I have never saw the worth in paying for a quiche. I didn’t see the point.
Chef had us display our baked quiche in a row and we could immediately see how different each one was. As Chef went down the line, he pointed at each quiche and commented “This one is okay. This one is okay too” and “This one has too much lardon” as he passed mine. Apparently I had forgotten to add a last layer of cheese on top and all the lardon had floated up while baking. “And what happened here??” Chef asked, stopping by a quiche. My classmate, a young Mexican boy, had apparently thrown in all the extra cheese he had, resulting in an explosion of cheese. It was quite funny.
When we were done with class, my Taiwanese classmate gave me her beautifully-baked quiche and I offered both hers and mine to the classmates from the Boulangerie course. Mine got rejected because it didn’t look as nice so I had to lug it along to lunch. “Look after my quiche,” I said to my Vietnamese classmate as I headed to the toilet. “No one wants your quiche,” he replied nonchalantly. Grrr….
The Rogue Wanderluster 