Egg White Omelettes

So, I ran out of Egg Beaters last week, but had some egg whites in the fridge from when I was thinking of making another Angel Food cake. Rather than let those go to waste, I figured I'd use them for my morning omelette.

Yuck.

I had enough for four days, so I was able to experiment a little bit. I was able to get them to not be quite as rubbery by whisking them up to even out the consistency, but really, even my best effort (which was, frankly, much better than most egg white omelettes I've tried) was still kind of gross.

I don't know why restaurants offer these as an option rather then just keeping Egg Beaters or something in their cooler.

Omelettes

I've never been great at these, which I considered to be somewhat of a failure of legacy on my part. Back in the seventies, my dad saw an episode of Julia Child's show and, it not being the internet, he took meticulous notes on an episode about making omelettes. I have no idea why this caught his attention, as he otherwise didn't do much of the cooking.* I need to ask him about that.

Anyway, omelettes, specifically chili cheese omelettes became his thing. He was really good at them. He could crank them out flawlessly over a Coleman single burner camp stove, even.

I've never been great at them. More often than not, I would just have have to give up and make them into "egg scrambles" or migas (if you have tortilla chips to throw in). I've come to understand that it's a mark of how well you understand your pan and how heat works. So, there's a gap.

On top of that, we recieved an omelette pan for our wedding, from my mother, I believe. I've never been able to get it to work right - being Calphalon One, it's supposed to be non-stick, but I've always had a problem with it. Eggs stick all the time in it. I vowed that I would defeat this pan and get it to work right. Yes, I have grudges against inanimate objects.

I've also been trying to eat better, including a solid, healthy breakfast in the morning. Egg Beaters omelettes were an obvious direction. I fill these with a serving of the Morningstar Farms Sausage flavored crumbles which are amazing. Perfectly seasoned for my taste.

So, I've been trying this for a week and, by the end, I started getting pretty good. A little Pam on the pan and keeping the temperature at a medium-high seems to work pretty well. I'm practicing the flipping and am starting to get the feel for it. I had a back-slide one day, where I left the pan on the heat too long before I started and, of course, everything stuck. Big mess. But for the most part, the right direction.

* Though years later, he got to be quite handy around the kitchen.

Update: The Costco version of Egg Beaters, Egg Starts, are noticably weaker in regards to quality. Overall, they're tougher than Egg Beaters. Tolerable, but as soon as I use them up, back to the name brand.

Scones

I used to hate scones. They were dry, tasteless and way too uppity. My entire experience with them, of course, was based on the ones at Starbucks. And then one day at Panera, I decided to try theirs, taking one each of their Orange Iced and the Savory Ham and Cheese.

Damn. I'm not sure what possessed me to to give them a shot, but those were revelations. both varieties were moist and flavorful, with a distinct firm (but not dry or tough) texture. I love them.

I also noticed that my Foster's Market cookbook had a recipe for them, with a number of variations. I made one batch, divided the dough in half, and then mixed in diced ham and shredded cheddar into one half of the dough. Overall, not bad. They're definitely better served fresh, that's for sure.

A few observations:

• Scones are basically biscuits. I should have guessed, but I didn't know that before. At least, this recipe is pretty much the same as my biscuit recipe.
• My oven still needs some adjustment. It's running a little hot now. These were looking done about 3/4 of the way through, easily.
• The texture was a bit crumbly - not unlike the problem I have with muffins. I think I need to work on the balance between combining and overworking ingredients with flour.
• I don't like working dough in my food processor. The bits in the corners of the food bowl were dry because the blades couldn't get at them. I had to work them in by hand. Though maybe if I had run it a little longer, I would have gotten them mixed in right and gotten enough gluten action. I was definitely conservative.
• I need to practice more with the ham and cheese to nail how well Panera does it. I'll probably buy a couple to take home and work side-by-side with them.

Gingerbread Pancakes with Lemon Sauce

Nope, not a rerun of the previous post.

I've really been wanting a good recipe for Gingerbread Panckaes for a long, long time. I used to get them all the time when I was schlepping books for W.W. Norton. Like the Eastside Cafe, these were a brief respite from the hell that was my life. I've tried improvising before by adding ground ginger, sugar and molasses in varying quantities to regular pancake batter and it never worked. Sometimes the results were outright disasters.

So, I was really stoked when I found this recipe. Sadly, I'm barely functional before I eat in the morning. Kind of makes it tough to make fancy breakfasts. But after putting it off for a month or two, I finally got to it. This was also another opportunity to try out my new two burner griddle.

After mixing everything together, there was a huge amount of batter, so I called our upstairs neighbors, Ron and Mary. God bless them. I like having other cooks around because you can mess something up, like I did here, and they understand.

They turned out burned on the outside and raw on the inside. This particularly chapped my hide as I used to be flawless at pancakes. Also, they were, to me, noticeably tough. Finally, there were noticeable crunchy bits of brown sugar.

There are three things I can think of right off the top of my head that need to be fixed with these (I'm not giving up yet):

1. I overmixed the batter. A LOT. I wasn't thinking and whisked in the dry ingredients, disregarding/forgetting that it was "mix until just combined." This made them tough, from the gluten forming up, but also I'm sure it made the batter bind up. As it was too thick, it couldn't spread out on the griddle. Being too thick, the outside burned before the inside cooked.
2. I really need more practice regulating temperature on that griddle.
3. I had a lot of brown sugar in the house, as I've bought it too often for cookies. My bags dry out and, because I'm in a hurry, I just buy another, forgetting how little is actually used in Tool House cookies. So, the bags build up. I had tried a quick trick for softening that I read online where you put a bowl of water in the microwave with the chunks of sugar. I then dropped it into the food processor. That seemed to work at the time, but crunchies spoke otherwise.

I whipped up some of the lemon sauce to use as syrup for these. This sauce, on the other hand, was fantastic. I even eliminated the issue of the egg white strands by making sure I had a good blend when beating the eggs and pouring then in to the pan while I have a really good whisk of the syrup going.

(Recipe link to be posted soon)

Do Over: Blueberry Muffins

I tackled these guys again, using the blueberries I got at the Evanston Farmers Market last week. I switched recipes, going for the Foster's Market cookbook. The recipe is also available online here. The alterations to the recipe were that I used jumbo size eggs instead of large (based on my suspicion that my issues with crumbling were the result of too little binding protein), using Penzey's dried lemon zest when it was clear that my only fresh lemon wasn't going to provide enough (it was a couple of days old and the rind had softened) and adding a bit (~1/4 tsp) of lemon extract to pump up the citrus flavor. I also dusted the tops with sanding sugar, just for flair.

The food processor cup/bowl thing (what do you call that? The place where the blades and food go?) was in the wash, so I used the two-knives-in-a-mixing-bowl method to chop the berries, since it was just asking for a coarse chop. That was kind of fun.

In baking, I made sure I used the entire cooking time (based on the under-baking last time, which may have also contributed to the crumbling). I also switched the backing tins' positions midway to even out the heating. I looked for a little more resistance to the toothpick in testing.

The result was miles better than last time. I would say that they were on the tough side, which is probably a result of overmixing, which they did warn about in the recipe. On a range of 0-10 from crumbly to tough, with 5 as the mid-point of perfect texture, I'd have to rate the first attempt as a 1 (God knows how they stayed together on the plate) and this as a 6.5/7. Much, much closer to the mark.

Blueberry Orange Muffins

I used to make fantastic muffins. Absolutely rocking. But something happened when I moved to Chicago. They fall apart all the time. It's really annoying. So, I decided to give it another shot. I used to use Pioneer Baking Mix (I think), which wasn't available in Chicago, so I used to think that it was an issue with using the Pioneer recipe with Bisquik or whatever. Adjustments there didn't work and I eventually gave up.

This time, I figured I'd work from scratch. I picked a recipe from P.J. Gray and Stanley Hunter's Bear Cookin': The Original Guide to Bear Comfort Foods. One of these guys (P.J., I think) is a friend of a friend whom I met at a small brunch. He made several of the recipes and they were really, really good. So, I eagerly bought a copy of the book from him.

Guess what? Same stupid result. They taste pretty good, but they fall apart instantly.

I suspect that it was the egg issue I referred to in the Hollandaise sauce post. Age and size. Size, in particular, as I'm guessing that there wasn't enough protein binding the cake together.

The orange in the recipe is a cup of orange juice. I can't taste it at all. So, I'm figuring swapping that out for concentrate or adding a teaspoon or two of orange extract to taste would help give it the citrus taste I was expecting.

I also realized this morning that I didn't cook them long enough. I went by color and not by testing. So, I got a mouthful of raw dough. Ugh.

This is a good recipe, I think, I just need to work on my execution and make some tweaks for flavor.

BLUEBERRY ORANGE MUFFINS

Never thought you were much of a baker? Prove yourself wrong with this easy muffin recipe. "When blueberries are in season, I like to bake these often," Stanley confesses. "Now my friends can't wait for blue blueberry season. I wonder why?"

1 cup quick rolled oats
1 cup orange juice
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs, beaten
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 to 4 cups fresh blueberries

Topping

1/2 cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400°F. Mix oats and orange juice; blend in oil and eggs and set aside. In another bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Add oat mixture and mix lightly. Fold in blueberries. Spoon batter into paper-lined muffin pans, filling 2/3 full. Combine topping ingredients and sprinkle over batter. Bake for approximately 15 to 18 minutes or until lightly browned.

Gray, PJ and Stanley Hunter. Bear Cookin’: the Original Guide to Bear Comfort Foods. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2003, p. 34.