Discarded egg white actually could turn into a 5-star breakfast nouvelle cuisine
By ChefSarawak@NZChefSi
From the Piano Chef August Food Package’s promotional gift is a loaf of Russian handmade sourdough bread from Albany’s Gastronomy. I learned that most Mainland China’s Chinese hate this kind of hard and chewy texture bread carried a little sourly taste, they prefer bread soft like cotton.
Russian handmade sour dough bread sold in Gastronomy, Albany, Auckland, NZ
That’s how I learned that sour dough bread required acquiring taste, if a person who never tries sour dough bread, first he has to get curious enough and open minded enough to taste it regardless of age or background, I remember how hard it was for me to convince even a western trained Chinese chef and some Chinese youngsters just to try a piece of sour dough rye bread, at the end I was eating alone happily, but they looked at me disgustingly like a group of westerners watching a Chinese eating monkey brain!
And I waited to receive this sour dough bread gift’s feedback, soon a nutritionist friend called told me that the sourdough bread wouldn’t go with the Kaya jam, I started to laugh cheekily, actually the surprise gift was not my intention selected to accompany the kaya jam, I wanted to promote and recommend NZ gourmet food and also let more Auckland residents grow their awareness of how lucky that they have different foreign gourmet food found within their reach.
So, how good is the Russian dough sour bread? Perhaps kids know better, it is so tasty that young kids simply would chew it plainly!
So, how good is the Russian dough sour bread? Perhaps kids know better, it is so tasty that young kids simply would chew it plainly!
Here is my recent fusion creation developed from the traditional French toast. I really don’t know the history of this Fuzhou-Chinee gourmet canape/entree, many other Chinese clans didn’t even realize Fuzhou-Chinese has this canape/entree being served during Chinese New Year, but most Sarawak Fuzhou-Chinese, know the existence of this deep-fried sandwich with minced meat filling. But from the white sandwich bread and the way it was deep fried I could tell it is definitely a Fuzhou-western fusion dish, a derivative of French toast. And now I further develop it by using Russian sour dough bread, you can serve this as breakfast, canape, entrée or snack.
Coconut hardly blends well with anything sour perhaps it’s only known way is mixing with yogurt in curry dish, but it would need a chef’s subtle skills and good taste buds to balance the whole pot of curry. I even like to fill the sandwich with kaya and cream cheese, but only spray a thin layer of cream cheese, again you should not let the sourness of cream cheese overtaken the kaya sweetness.
Sour dough rye bread is like pumpkin nickel, they both go very well to accompany anything savory, it’s sour and it even tastes greater if it is eaten with gherkin pickle.
After I produced the kaya, there was so much egg white remained in the fridge, when I worked in cafés and restaurants, I would ask to dump the egg white when yolks were required to make hollandaise or mayonnaise. I was brought up in a generation that didn’t believe in food should go wasted, we were trained since young to be very resourceful with any left-over food.
During my NZ advanced cookery L5 study, one day my chef tutor Craig Scholten took a giant size mixing bowl with potatoes cut in different sizes placed it right in front of me, “Now, think of produce it as a vegetarian dish!” Within the limited time before returning home to get ready for the next day’s breakfast service, I only could have enough time to produce onion mash potato and a tomato sauce.” And I was informed that our life service would be made into promotional video! Before I returned home, I was asked to think a way to create something more interesting for the mashed potato cake on the next morning.
Boommm.... ex AHCTS Chef tutor Natalie was the "first customer" during the breakfast service, who decided to order this vegetarian dish!
It was an evening that required me to think what was something considered as “vegetarian ingredients” but in an excess and unwanted in the kitchen, then I recalled everyone had to make sabayon, so on the next morning, I started to collect egg white from everyone to whisk it into a meringue. But by placing just the meringue alone on top of potato cake would be too boring and lacked texture, so I decided to add herbal croutons that would be “glued” and "sandwiched" by the “savory and sweet meringue”, then top up the “cake” by cheese and let it gratinized under salamander.
The fun part was when the cheese began to drip downward. My Indian team player really enjoying ensembled and grilled them so much, he learned the trick at once after I showed him how to do it. I realized from this creation not just tasted great, it has to be fun enough to provoke a chef’s desire to “play” with it.
From the creation, I further on created another fine dining breakfast nouvelle cuisine after completed my NZ L5 Professional Cookery Diploma. I realized that most chefs explored more on lunch and dinner menu but usually breakfast menu is kept rather conservatively, and the price is really not cheap of the traditional breakfast that we found in regular cafés or restaurants, a simple Egg Benedict could cost at least NZ$13.50 to 18.00. Even as a hungry chef, I won’t pay my money for something that I know how to cook and know its cost price. But if the Egg Benedict is dripping with “Champaign” hollandaise and topped up with herbal and nuts crunch sealed and smoked tuna, I surely will be very curious to taste it.
Something about the egg white waste - actually it can help to change the texture of a fritter. When you add more egg white as the batter, the fritter ends up springier, you will surely like the texture. I did an Asian version of fritter by adding bean sprout, prawn (or assorted seafood), onion, coriander, Korean fermented chili powder, ginger juice, white miso paste, salt, sugar, vinegar, flour, lots of egg white and less whole egg, ground black pepper, garlic chives (or garlic chive flower stem). After pan fry or deep fry the fritters, cut into bite size, I let the fritter served with sambal sauce and ketchup.
From the Piano Chef's August food package deal: A sambal which took long hours to prepare more than 20 ingredients (normal Malaysian used less than 10 ingredients to prepare their sambal) and careful control of heat during long hour simmering, it is a very versatile condiment, a container of 250ml can last for so long. Kaya jam needs at least an hour to prepare and cook in order to get silky smooth consistency and ginger jujube tea's, the ginger was peeled and sliced, and only the highest quality jujube was used but reprocessed.
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