Monday, September 28, 2009

Ideas in... Disaster


Circulating for the Glory.

They say that the path to greatness is littered with failure.

And that hindsight is 20/20.

Whatever the case, my breakfast today was an utter disaster.

Inspired by Alex and Aki's recent victory with eggs and the ISI whipper, I decided to get my morning meal off to a different start by taking some eggs, butter, salt, hot sauce and skim milk and whisking it all together. As I was cracking the eggs, I started to realize that 500g is a lot of eggs for one guy. I decided to halve the recipe, which probably led to my downfall.

From there, it's into an ISI Whipper and the whole thing goes into an 82C water bath for one hour. Again, that decision to go for one hour after halving the recipe added to the disaster on the horizon.


Egg Disaster.

An hour and five minutes later, I pull the ISI from the water and hit it with two nitrous charges. Things sound like they're shaking in there. On a plate, I've got some applewood smoked bacon from Springfield Farm and a nicely toasted everything bagel. The stage is set and I've got the charged ISI in hand. Time to pull the trigger.

Molten butter blows furiously from the nozzle, but no eggs. I'm expecting the sabayon-esque egg to come oozing out but all I'm getting is hot butter. I shake the whipper some more. More butter. Shake again. Still butter. Crap. Shake, shake, shake. All that is, is butter. Dammit!

What the heck? I blow through the charge and screw open the whipper knowing full well what I'm going to see: poached egg inside the ISI Whipper. It's a crushing defeat. I'm in anguish. I'm in anguish because I'm hungry.


A close-up look at the egg detail. Interesting.

Regardless of the failure, I use a knife to dig out the eggs. They fall out and are quite fluffy and moist. The texture is nice and I'm finding the intertwining of the yolk, whites and scrambled mixture to be visually appealing.

It's a complete disaster but I eat half of it anyway. Turns out that 250g of eggs is still a lot for one person.

Next time I'll be victorious.