What Gordon does not mention is he is making scrambled eggs as a failed sauce.
When the eggs are sufficiently warmed to melt cold butter then they are basically cooked. By lifting off the heat while stirring or whisking throughout you control the degree the eggs form curds.
The instant you notice curd forming then remove the pan from the heat and keep stirring. Gordon places the pot on wood surface to retain the heat of the pot, but if he would place the pot on the cool flat metal surface of the stove then it would actually cool the pot sufficiently to abate curds forming while continuing to whisk incipient curds back into the liquid egg. Then back on the heat to continue thickening without forming curds.
You control how stiff the eggs become by controlling the evaporation. Keep the eggs liquid as sauce, or stiffen the eggs as familiar overcooked scrambled eggs heated in a pan. You have to decide when to stop. If you keep going the eggs will rubberize as people usually have them and these soft sauce-like scrambled eggs are the mark of a cook who knows what they are doing while rubbery scrambled eggs cooked dry are the mark of a dummkopf cook.
A tablespoon of sour cream or crème fraîche whisked in at the end stops the cooking action completely and prevents further curd formation plus it adds a touch of acid just like a failed Hollandaise sauce. Which should give you ideas about additions such as cayenne and lemon instead of sour cream or crème fraîche.
Note, no salt until the eggs are finished and ready to serve. Salt makes the eggs go wonky until the eggs are finished then salt to your heart's contentment. Plus anything else that you like, say, green onion or chives, mushrooms whatever.
I love that Gordon says serve on sturdy thick slice of sourdough bread and not English muffin, funny because English muffin or bagel would be our first instinct. Plus he nearly burns his bread in a toaster behind him, when he has the pan for his mushrooms and tomato right there already hot. He could have used that same pan at the same time with his vegetables and do all that at once, and blow off the toaster altogether.
So now you are expert.
Surprise the h-e-double wooden spoons out of your main squeeze honey pot with this smoked salmon on croissant idea, forget Christmas, this meal is great anytime:
Close your nasal passage and say, "qua-soo." You have to love how French have so many ideas for stale bread, and they're all great. Dry croissants make the best bread pudding ever, another egg, cream and bread dish.
This book is tiny with fantastic photos, it is quite the work of art, and it manages to tell you all you can do with eggs.
The book receives high ratings on Amazon. But why did the few people mark it down? Let's look.
- I would have liked more specific tips and ideas (e.g. the book should mention unlined copper bowls and simiar tricks; cooking time depending on different egg size and temperature; doing Hollandaise using bain-marie).
- What determines the taste of different eggs yolks?
- How do you make the perfect scrambled eggs?
- What are the differnt kind of eggs?
- How do eggs vary in taste across countries?
- How much omega-3 has omega-3 eggs?
- I did not realize this was written by a master of french cooking. so it was a disapointment for me
- I have three chickens and needed the 101 rescipes for the home chicken owner
- It is very french and I am not fond of french cooking
- I'm a 20 year old male, and I like to cook. I bought this book because eggs are cheap and they taste good, but for many recipes in the book I don't know what some of the ingredients are.
Eggs are fundamental to cooking. The last comment caused me to cast back when I was a teen myself and decided back then that I needed learn about eggs for myself. On my own I understood then that I must know what eggs do and learn how to get eggs to do various things. If I would master eggs first then that right there would go a very long way in mastering a lot of other things too.
The copper bowl thing mentioned in the first comment is about meringue having to do with copper ions knocked off while whisking. The ions are picked up by the egg whites and strengthening them while imparting a faint copper sheen. Meringue whisked in a copper bowl is sturdier than if whisked in ordinary glass bowl. Also, plastic bowl will not do. No oil allowed and plastic is a petroleum product.
Taste of egg yolks is determined by the diet of the hens laying the egg. The more varied, including leftover human food, seeds, bugs and grub whatever they go around pecking lead to both tastier eggs and tastier chicken. It does make a big difference, not only in taste but also in color and how the yolks stand up taller when cracked into a pan. My egg farmer friends said they do not see a difference, but I sure do. Here is another thing you are not going to like, the eggs I bought at Whole Food, their central one, not the nearby one, are altogether better than the usual grocery store eggs from regular battery chickens. That would be the difference you might see in other countries.
