To make an omelet, you’ve gotta break a few eggs. To learn to use a Phantom v.12 high-speed video camera, it’s best to break those eggs as dramatically as possible. This was shot at 6900 frames per second, which is fast enough to capture the worst facial expression I’ve ever made.
Video courtesy of Modernist Cuisine / The Cooking Lab, LLC.
We had friends over for brunch last weekend, so I pulled out an old standby: brioche with a 64°C egg, maple syrup, pancetta and pea butter. It’s my version of French toast, you know, because of the toast part. I’m not trying to sound snooty when I say this is “as simple as can be” because you do need a sous vide machine and a centrifuge to make it. However, provided you have those tools, the recipe brain-dead easy. When I was growing up, we used to go for brunch at a diner that made “sweet pea guacamole” served alongside a Tex-Mex omelet. I loved the notion of having peas with breakfast, and once I discovered centrifuged pea butter, that was even more reason to work it into the dish. I’m sure there’s a “green eggs and ham” permutation of these ingredients, too; if you find it, please share.
Total kitchen time: 10 minutes + 3 hours centrifuge time + 1 hour sous vide time
Makes: 4 servings
To assemble, top the toasted brioche with an egg. Pour over pea butter and warmed maple syrup. Finish with slices of fried pancetta.
[Thanks to the Estevez family and my wife Rachel for helping me make a mess in the photo above]
This idea was inspired by a post I recently ran across on The Novice Chef that showed an egg cooked in a waffle iron. I thought that as pretty clever, so I ripped it off. However, I don’t have a waffle iron. I only have a waffle cone iron, which is great for making (duh) waffle cones, tuile, and other thin, ridged treats. I heated the iron to about 250F (checking the surface temp with my infrared thermometer), then unplugged it. These irons get so hot that, at full temperature, they’ll quickly scorch the eggs and you’re left with a flaky mess. I separated the yolk and white of one egg and cooked them individually. You are free to cook the yolk however you like – poach it, put it in a hemisphere mold and cook it in a combi-oven, cook sous vide in a bag, fry it, etc.
Now I’m going to make a logical leap to try to justify this playful experiment: with a waffled texture, the egg will hold more condiment on its surface. Butter, syrup, hot sauce, ketchup, pea butter, balsamic vinegar… they can all hang out in the shallow ponds created by the waffled surface. But who am I kidding? This was just fun.