Top Chef #4: Sunday Brunch

Liz and I, along with our friend Roxana, got to Top Chef Mecca (Liz's place) at 8:15ish am to start with the cooking.

Since brunch wasn't going to be served until 11 am, we focused on the prepping. Roxana made the whipped cream for the crepes. Liz made the egg mixture for the spanish tortilla and also made the chipotle aioli. I  and made the french toast batter and the crepe mixture. I also prepped the bread for the egg in a hole. We didn't have a biscuit cutter like the recipe called for, so we used a drinking glass that had a diameter of about 3 inches. It worked pretty well. Also, we felt bad throwing the holes out, so we put 4 of them together to make a "slice" of bread.



As far as I could tell, all of the prepping was fairly easy. We were finished with the prep about 30 - 45 minutes. After which we hung out for a little whiles. At about 10 am, we started making the crepes. A few notes on making crepes, especially if you don't have a crepe pan. Choose a shallow pan that has a large flat surface. If your pan isn't that big, just adjust how much batter you put into the pan. I had a larger pan, and Roxana was making crepes on a smaller pan. The recipe said to use 1/4 cup of the batter for each crepe, which worked for me. But with Roxana's pan, it looked more like a pancake. We cut that in half, and had a perfect crepe. The other key components are to butter the pan after each crepe with a brush and to really spread out that batter to the edges of the pan.

I turned over my crepe making duties to Liz and focused on the french toasts. There was a LOT of bread to soak up. The egg in a hole called for a french toast with egg on top of another piece of french toast. So since we were making brunch for 8, we had 16 pieces of french toast. Anyways, they soaked every ounce of the egg mixture. The tough part was to then make the egg in a hole. The recipe called for toasting one side with the egg, then flipping it to toast the other side. Well, I wasn't sure how the egg would remain sunny side up if that was the case. We first tried that route and the egg became over easy/medium. I also tried toasting one side and after flipping it, added the egg, which looked nice, but took forever. We also realized that the extra large eggs we were using were teeming over the holes. So for future reference, use medium - large size eggs. The other alternative is to toast one side, flip to the other side, add the egg and finish it off in the oven. I found that using a wide but flat skillet was much easier than a curved bottom pan.The assembling of the dish was quite easy. We had a piece of french toast at the bottom. In the middle was a piece of prosciutto and on top was the egg in a hole.

Moving on to the tortilla. Liz had previously made the mix for the tortilla and prior to cooking it we added the crackers and chips so that they retained some of the crunch.  The recipe made for quite a lot and the two skillets we used made pretty big tortillas. Since one of the skillets was deep dish, it was pretty tough to flip the tortilla. It required two of us, both using spatulas to turn over one half and sort of shove the other half over. Since the tortilla was somewhat pliable, we were able to flip them that way without breaking the tortilla.



And for the tasting of the meal.

Starting off with the egg in a hole. It was quite tasty, but most of our esteemed diners said that the prosciutto didn't do much for them. In this case, it might have been better to splurge for better quality prosciutto or perhaps put two slices so that the saltiness can be more prevalent.

The tortilla was quite delicious, but what really made that dish was the chipotle aoili which had an awesome spicy kick to it! The chips and crackers added a nice and different texture to the tortilla.

The crepe was delicious. It was wrapped in the almond whipped cream and strawberries, and was deceptively light -- there's a lot of butter that goes in to it!

Another successful meal!