What an Egg-Cellent Day for Cooking

It's my favorite meal of the day - BREAKFAST! In this class, we started making a menu: sunny-side and over-easy eggs, pancakes, french toast, crepes, eggs benedict and florentine, poached eggs, and fruit.
Chef demonstrated how to flip an egg without breaking the yolks.

These are my batch of eggs:
Sunny-side up

Step 1 over-easy

Finished eggs! 4 ways

I put all of them on a plate with a little salt and pepper. Yum! Runny-yolks all around.

Below, a filled American omelette. Hotels serve this omelette with a little bit of the internal veggie mixture on top so servers know which one is which.

Below, my American omelette with a little tomato sauce.

The class also made crepes with homemade apple filling and whipped cream. My contribution is the blueberry-cinnamon whipped compound "butter" (the pink rosette at the top of the plate).

My rosettes!

Poached eggs on top of fried pastrami and a "buttered" english muffin:

Then we made french toast! See recipe at the bottom of the post.
It was so delicious, and here's why:

• we used challah bread that sat on a shelf at school, bag open, for three days (this allowed the bread to become a little stale)
• the bread was sliced to an inch thick (so it soaked up just enough but not too much egg)
• it was fried in clarified "butter" (margarine) for extra flavor and a golden brown color

 Classmate Esther preparing the vol au vant - a tri-layer pastry dough, cut in rounds and baked into a bowl shape. Then it would be filled with scrambled eggs, onions, and lox.

 Below, sifted flour for the pancake batter. Every student, either individually or in pairs, was working on prepping a different recipe station. When we finished our prep and made a batch, we would move on to a different station to execute a new recipe.

Orange twist and strawberry fan garnish

Ingredient set-up for the Breakfast Menu - fruit, lox, onions, pastrami, pancake batter, whipped cream, and compound butter rosettes.

 The recipe I worked on, the LEO (Scrambled Lox, Eggs, and Onion) in a vol au vant.

 I channeled an orange to slice for garnish. To do this, I used a channeling tool (bottom right on the cutting board).

 Another plating of the LEO, this time with chives.

 Our Breakfast Table!

 Below, my banana chocolate chip pancakes with maple syrup, blueberries, and blueberry-cinnamon compound butter.

Hope your breakfast was as good as ours!*

 ******

Blueberry Cinnamon Compound Butter

1 pound good-quality butter (or margarine)
handful of fresh blueberries
2 tsp cinnamon (more if you want a stronger flavor)
drizzle of your favorite honey

In a food processor, pulse the blueberries, cinnamon, and honey.
Next, pulse in the butter or margarine in small pieces until all the ingredients are combined.
Scoop the butter mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip or onto a parchment paper sheet.
If you choose to pipe, pipe rosettes onto a baking sheet and freeze until ready to use.
If you put it on a parchment paper, roll into a log and twist the ends. Place in the freezer until ready to use. When ready to use, slice off what you need!

Challah French Toast
 10 beaten eggs
16 oz. whole milk
you can also use a combination of heavy cream and milk, non-alcoholic Bailey's coffee creamer, other flavored coffee creamer, camel milk, nut milk, or pareve creamer
 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups granulated sugar
 pinch of salt
12 slices of challah (about 1 large loaf)
can also use leftovers, whatever size pieces you have
confectioner's sugar

Whisk together eggs, milk, cinnamon, vanilla, sugar and salt.
Heat a skillet or griddle pan and pour in a dab of butter or oil, enough to LIGHTLY coat the bottom of the pan.
Dip the slices of challah in the egg mixture, coating each side.
Fry in the butter/oil until golden brown on each side, flipping once or twice.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with compound butter, jam, syrup, or fruit. 
 

*Was it not excellent? Hire me to make you an excellent breakfast!

Enjoy!