The Egg Aventure - Ep 1 :Bistrot Style Egg Salad

Welcome back everybody. We are going on to an egg adventure because it's been quite some time since I wanted to do this and I'm not talking about something we're going to be making omelette and scrambled egg. I'm talking about egg recipes such as these from her book the Egg Florentine. You've got a poached egg, bed of spinach covered in mayonnaise sauce and cheese broiled in the oven. That is the type of recipe that I'm after. Something with flair where the egg is mixed with other stuff. But we need to start simple and the best way to begin is the hard-boiled egg and the mayonnaise. In France this is called the oeuf mayo. Half the egg, the drop of mayonnaise. But this is not a format I find very handy. The rest of the world use this to make a famous egg salad with the eggs. It's chopped, mixed with the mayonnaise and other ingredients and it's very versatile. You can serve it as is, as a side and even make an egg sandwich which is so famous in Holland where I live for a few years. So this is where we're going to be starting with the egg salad and how to make it from scratch with a few different flavors I'm going to share with you and you're going to see it makes all the difference already. And if you like eggs you're in for a good ride. So let's begin our egg adventure. Number one here the egg salad and I think the egg salad is like hamburgers. Everybody knows how to make it but there's a handful of people that knows how to make it really well. Okay there's not many ingredients. We got first the eggs. They have to be good quality organic eggs if you if you can. A homemade mayonnaise and then chives and these are really the pillars, the three little things. You can replace the chive with spring onion but I found they're already intrusive and they can overpower your salad. So my favorite here is absolutely chives. So let's go through the process and I'm going to share with you the key little thing that makes all the difference and that's going to make really your salad shine and be absolutely tasty. Let's go. So let's begin on the stove with our water. I'm going to bring this water to the boil. I'm going to add a pinch of salt and a dash of vinegar in here. Now while the water is coming to a boil it is a good time to make the mayonnaise. A quick recap on the mayonnaise. When you're making a mayonnaise make sure that your egg yolk is at room temperature. You don't want anything too cold and you want to measure your oil. Now the oil usually about 120 to 150 ml is the sweet spot. Okay so my advice go and measure. You start with your egg yolks. We're going to add a little bit of salt and pepper. It can't be boring and you're going to have about you know a teaspoon of mustard in here. The most important when you're here is to start the emulsification process. So you mix everything and you spend 20 seconds or something like that to mix everything together to really have a bit of a foamy mixture. Not exactly foamy but you know what I mean. So I'm bringing you a bit closer to the action and you can see now you've got that mixture that's kind of yellowish and it's all really blended. From here you can start to add a little bit of oil. Okay it doesn't have to be a droplet of oil. Okay and you make sure it goes in there. It's incorporated. It starts to thicken and you continue. So you can see within minutes it's becoming super thick and I'm finishing my oil. This is 150 ml of oil for the one egg yolk. So this is it. Look at the mayonnaise. It's very thick. Indeed another problem and depending on the color of your egg yolks it may be a little bit too yellow for some people and what you can do in this case is to add a little bit of vinegar or a lemon juice. So just I'm going to add a drop of apple cider vinegar in here. See just a little drop in here and I'm going to use a small whisk just to show you. Okay and you mix that in and that is going to add some tanginess to your mayonnaise and it's really going to whiten it and make it look like the thing you got in a shop. As soon as your mayonnaise is done you transfer it to a small container. I'm going to cover it with plastic film and I'm going to store this in the fridge only while we're making the eggs. Remember you can keep the mayonnaise in the fridge for a little bit but not too long otherwise it's going to be a kind of a crust that's going to form and that is the oil that starts to solidify. Okay so you can put it in the fridge but not for too long. Okay so plastic film in the fridge and now let's cook the eggs. Perfect timing. My water is now boiling and my eggs here at room temperature you're going to delicately place them into the water. Okay and you're going to be wanting to use a timer here so as soon as it's in the water I'm going to count eight minutes top. Okay rising my heat and as soon as the eight minutes are done we're going to take this off. You do not want, you do not want to overcook your eggs because that is going to ruin your salad. So now my eggs are in we can cut the chives. Now the chives one of those things that also we can be careless about. I'm just going to chop the chives right and you end up with huge chunks, pieces that are too large and when you have a salad the last thing you want is to have a really large bite on a piece of chive. They're great for adding flavors and they were great but you don't want too many big chunks because then you end up like oh this is like big branches everywhere. So what I found always when it comes to chive is really make the best possible effort to really go as small as you can. Okay so I'm talking about this. Okay that kind of size. Final closer look I'm done with the chives and look at this. This is how small they are. This is what you want and there's no big chunks of chives. They're all thinly thinly chopped. My timer just went off. I'm turning this and I'm going to pour that water out and fill it with cold water. Now this step is absolutely crucial as soon as the timer goes off make sure you empty the boiling water, fill with cold and you leave a stream of very cold water running for 30 or 40 seconds. It's going to stop the cooking of the eggs and prevent them from getting rubbery and it's going to make the whole peeling process afterward much easier. Once you're done you leave them in cold water for a good five minutes before peeling them. And now for the peeling. So I've already started but what you do you take your eggs you kind of break it on the sink you know you can do it like this with your hand roll it but don't smash it too hard and you're using that kind of running water that's what I do you see to help it goes in between the kind of the membrane and everything the bit of the eggs then it's kind of easier to detach. You still have to be gentle and bit by bit we're going to be detaching everything and we're going to be peeling our eggs. Okay there we go and once they're done you have to keep the eggs in a bowl filled with cold water not a dry bowl. Okay so I'm going to plunge this in my bowl next to me in cold water. So let's take a break for a moment because we've reached a big milestone we've made everything we've prepared the eggs we have the chives and we've made the mayonnaise. So from here if you're not ready you can keep the mayo and the eggs in the fridge and whenever you're ready we can start the slicing and the assembling. And now for the cutting of the eggs now you can chop them whatever way you want cut them in half chop them and hack away with your knife but you want rather a smallish kind of pieces and having tried different things I think one of the tools that I like is to use these kind of egg slicer things. Okay so I start with this see up because we first get this and then I get my eggs out that is kind of pre-sliced and then I go through and do my slices. Okay and I'm going to be slicing away okay to get a nice little mixture you see the egg yolk is not overcooked and I'm going to transfer this into a bowl and repeat with all the eggs. Would you look at this this is the core of your salad and this is where it needs to shine the egg yolk is not like chalk and you will see that the egg white is really tender and you have a piece it almost melts in the mouth and this is very very important if you don't have that you're not gonna have a great egg salad. Okay now let's do the basics mayonnaise typically I will run about a tablespoon per egg a small tablespoon so we've got five eggs so you see I'm gonna add I can add about four to five a bit generous tablespoon of mayonnaise in there and then very gently and very carefully and we're just gonna start to incorporate everything in there. I'm all done the final touch of course the chives so the chives the same thing I add a little bit of chives but don't want to overpower my egg salad with chives so a little bit of it and then same thing we're gonna mix and then we're gonna have a taste and that's it we're all done this is the basic egg salad we've got a little bit of chive but not too much you know what I want is eggs eggs and eggs and the mayonnaise I'm gonna have of course have a try oh eggs and mayonnaise is just that kind of a match made in heaven and I think I'm gonna add the rest of my mayonnaise I think I've got like a bit more I just love homemade mayonnaise oh addictive so now where can you go from here you can add all kinds of ingredients people add all kinds of things in France we can add tomatoes you can add gherkins spring onions even pieces of you know of sausage or anything like this and you can get like a salad pimentes but the more you add things the more you're gonna have a mixed salad and the less you're gonna have an egg salad one of the winning combination I've come across in Holland is number one the curry you add a few pinches of curry into your egg salad to make a curry flavor egg salad the second one is mustard you add some extra dijon mustard in here okay and if you want to go further than that you can pan-fry it streaky bacon really really crispy and then chop it and add it in there and mixing the whole lot together but what's there in the back this is the famous white bread because at the moment watching this I'm starving and I'm going to be building that very simple and humble egg sandwich that I love the egg sandwich is so simple but the one thing you need is that really basic soft white bread it's almost like a mattress and you want a soft crust you don't want something hard anything you could get rid of the crust if you want but the basic one is just it's just that we're going to try to add some of the egg salad and I'm going to kind of spread it over using a spatula very gently now look at this now this is really the epitome of the simple pleasure you got this homemade mixture with that piece of bread and what you're doing you know we're going to add that other piece on there and the um you know cutting is very important I'm using this long knife it's kind of that kind of bakery or baker's knife to not squash the whole thing up okay and trying to have that it's almost like when you're a kid you know and this is the egg sandwich look at this look inside it's fluffy like a mattress ready to be eaten I'm going to be civilized and I've cut one half into another half but look at this pieces of eggs falling on the side you got the chives you got the you know the egg yolk that's just barcooked kind of thing and and you know what I'm going in ah so simple but it works so well honestly that's beautiful but I complete the video guys this is the part one on how to make an excellent from scratch you can flavor it with all kinds of things if you've never tried it before honestly it is super versatile you know highly recommended for sandwiches for a dip any time of the day if you've got kids or whatever it is a great thing to do next time of course we're gonna start to go a bit further with the egg with something more complex more complicated and see what kind of flavor we can get I'll see you all next time on the french cooking academy take care all bye