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The journey begins with an egg.
Eggs are one of the few ingredients when cooked that talks to you.
I like my yolk runny.
That's a beautiful color.
Who wouldn't want that for breakfast?
- Let the egg set. - Eggs at room temperature.
I have a little boiled egg...
The egg is razor cut.
Say goodbye to the egg. Bye, egg.
It's perfect.
An omelette, is an omelette, is an omelette.
- The egg is cut. - Egg on a roll.
Going to really splurge.
I wish I could have breakfast like this every day.
Breakfast in one bite: Scotch egg.
- It's a good egg. - Northern fulmar egg.
The whole snake head.
It cures any hangover, any time.
Whoo!
Very classic English Scotch egg.
It's basically an egg with sausage on the outside
that's been breadcrumbed and...
Well, normally, it was baked but, we fry it.
And it's basically a breakfast in one bite.
I like making sausages.
So, that looks good, huh?
Beautiful, you know, good ingredients.
So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add some sage.
I'm going to put some panade in it, make it nice and smooth,
you know, kind of bring it together.
Just kind of mix that up.
Well, you don't want to overwork the mix, do you?
No, not really.
- It smells good, huh? - Lovely.
Just salty and delicious.
Going to be porky.
Can't wait, I can't... I mean, it's just fun.
Sausages, Scotch eggs.
It's about four ounces of sausage.
You know, we've worked on this so long.
- Yeah. - You know, to try and perfect it,
and make sure that we took out all the variables that could go wrong.
- We just didn't... - Well, because it's very simple,
but, it's a technical skill.
- It has to be done precisely, yeah. - Right.
So, basically I have a little boiled egg
that I boiled for seven minutes.
You just drop your egg in like this,
and then you just kind of keep knocking it down like this
until it starts to kind of encase.
You seem to be enjoying your cooking.
Yes, I do.
Very much more these days.
I mean you were always totally passionate about it,
but, you sometimes used to be sort of intense.
I think I used to be hard on myself, you know.
You were very hard, you were incredibly hard on yourself.
I just didn't ever think I was as good as I could have been.
You know, I was always trying to like push, push myself more
to be better.
And when things didn't go right or I messed up a little bit,
I'd be... you know, it'd be torture for me, you know.
Say goodbye to the egg. Bye, egg.
Bye, egg.
- Ta-da! - Beautiful.
And then we're just going to put it in the flour...
- Yeah. Yeah. - ...egg and breadcrumb.
And the flour just helps the egg stick,
and then the egg helps the breadcrumb stick.
You know how to do this, I mean...
- Well, I do actually, yeah. - Yeah.
- You taught me how to pané. - I might have done.
Yeah.
All righty, that's it.
- Beautiful. - Let's go fry these babies.
Do you want to give nine minutes timer on it?
I like the idea of me being the technical.
I know.
Beautiful.
- Aren't they amazing? - Yeah.
Okay, let's have a look.
Let's see.
- Beautiful. - Not bad, not bad.
Still a bit moist, which is good.
- You want to have a little taste? - I think that's perfect.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- That's good. - Good?
I love the sage.
Yeah, the sage is good. Very English, the sage, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
Good egg.
Thanks. Thanks, Chef.
It's very hot New York summer
in that very old school way
where we don't have air conditioning.
You maybe have screens in the windows,
and the grit is everywhere.
I'm living on almost the West Side Highway.
A lot of heavy commercial traffic going in and out of the Lincoln Tunnel.
Prostitutes are working the tunnel,
and I guess the avenue, too.
The first time I saw it, I was mind-blown.
There's a guy alone in a Buick, polo shirt,
creased khaki pant, kind of, business dude.
And at the traffic light,
up she pops, and the door opens,
and out she gets.
I was just like...
Even though I feel very jaded, and smoking, and so cool,
but, I was only 16.
And I guess it was very different in New York at the time.
Like it was very much hang out on the side of the highway,
and wave, and wear nothing.
They would get coffee, and water, and orangeade,
and they would sit on the stoop.
I mean, I can just remember arriving to the stoop
with my egg on a roll, and my New York Times,
whatever I'm reading, and they are like laying out
the baby wipe or, a coffee napkin,
for her bare ass,
and she's going to sit on it.
These ladies were very comfortable, and convivial,
and sweet, actually.
Solicitous and almost maternal.
Not wanting to be in the way, or cause any trouble.
And I just sat with them.
But, I was hell-bent on acting like I knew what was happening.
It just fed and led to this...
urgent need to be very grown up, very fast,
and to know everything,
and I didn't know
And really, I was like, shaking and I'm starving,
and hustling hard to...
"Yeah, I got this. I'm cool, I got it."
I'm going to do the best I can to be exactly
like the deli man would do.
The only difference is you can feel pretty good
eating this bacon, these eggs, this cheese.
The ingredients are good.
It's really a grab and go thing.
New York style,
slung out by your deli man in four minutes
while you get your coffee at the deli on your way to work.
And I'm going to toast my roll.
So, it's your whole breakfast, but, instead of sitting down
and eating it civilized, like on a plate,
it's ready to roll for you.
I'm going to really splurge and have a two-egg egg on a roll.
I like the egg-to-bread ratio better with two.
Just excellent bacon I've been eating pretty much every day
for 15 years and still have not tired of.
I like my yolk runny.
Let the egg set, and then drape the cheese over top,
and melt it.
I'm not a big lunch eater, so I really like breakfast foods
all the time.
Egg and cheese, up under the sally.
Let that melt a little bit.
Butter my toasted roll with the sweet butter.
In real deli man style,
they would have put oleo or, margarine,
and then laid this down on the griddle
and gotten nice and gross.
I'm going to stop there.
I just want the cheese to melt, not really separate.
Yeah, I want it to just kind of drape.
Mmm mmm mmm.
Often the biggest meal of my day,
would take it wrapped in aluminum foil
and go sit on my stoop
in the sweltering summer heat,
hanging out with the prostitutes.
I'm sure I was smoking like a total pro at that point,
acting way cool.
As a result, I was introduced to the fantastic egg on a roll.
A really tasty thing to eat.
So, I think it's just around here, this corner,
if I remember right.
Yeah, this is the spot.
And the trick is to take some of the grass or, a few leaves
and kind of throw it against the bird
- before you catch it. - Yeah.
That usually scares him off.
Sometimes it doesn't,
then you have to get in close and personal, but...
Good success.
Very good.
So, now it's just grab the egg.
You have to pull yourself up.
Very good.
My first northern fulmar egg.
Still same temperature as the bird's...
the inside of a bird.
This was probably lied... laid an egg, like, today or, yesterday.
It's very, very fresh.
I'm really looking forward to cooking this.
To have the fresh eggs, it's a very special thing.
It's something you do once a year, right?
- Yeah. - Hmm.
And when you go out like we did yesterday,
I think at least I realized
how valuable these eggs
must have been once upon a time because people must have
put so much effort and also risk into getting them
because it is a dangerous thing to walk around on these cliff edges
- just to pick these eggs. - Yeah.
It's also something really special when you're out
- close to where food comes from. - Yeah.
Regardless if it's in the wild nature
or if it's in a barn or, something.
Like when you get that special connection,
like yesterday, you know, with the fantastic views,
and all of the impressions you get from, you know,
everything from the view to the fear of falling down the cliff,
to the smell of the egg when you pick it up
and you smell it straight from the nest.
Yeah, yeah, I have like even if they don't smell that good,
I always like the smell because that remember me
of the good days when we have collected them.
And how long are these going to cook now?
Yeah, 12 minutes.
A lot of the traditional food in the Nordic countries
actually contains a lot of seasoning
that you wouldn't expect to find there,
like curry powder, for example, this is very, very popular.
There's a lot of ginger, a lot of black pepper,
- a lot of allspice. - Yeah.
And I think that's probably because the people of the Nordics
have always been travelers.
- From the Vikings... - From the Vikings, yeah.
...to the East India traders and all those people.
You know, bringing these flavors back to the Nordic region.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I often thought about that.
- Can I peel one? - Yeah, go ahead.
- They're pretty large, huh? - Yeah.
And the white is also extraordinarily firm.
Yeah.
It doesn't feel at all like the egg from a hen or, a duck,
- or something like that. - Mm-hmm.
It's almost like jelly candy-like in the texture
- when you squeeze it. - Yeah.
And that is quite typical for a sea bird's egg.
- It is? - Yeah.
- This is beautiful. - Yeah.
Order fire. Tabasco with a side sausage and bene.
Tabasco bene, bene for two.
I'm going to make a totally classical hollandaise first.
Melt the butter.
Thing I want to put in are the yolks.
Pour some lemon juice into here.
That is a beauty.
The only key to success is to make sure there's enough acid
to receive all that fat.
The butter is now bubbling away, melting.
Thickening up, you can see it's gotten emulsified.
I prefer to make the sauce highly seasoned.
Bright with lemon, warm from the cayenne.
Perfectly salty.
I started brunch, frankly, to make some money.
Any time you have the space not generating dollars,
especially in a place like this,
we have the engine of a 65-seat restaurant with only 30 seats.
So, brunch became a pretty obvious way
to offset being in the hole all the time.
It's classic eggs Benedict,
but, to bring all of that hacker, line cook,
greasy spoon, speed and energy to a good pan,
and a good egg, and a real hollandaise.
To make the roasty individually,
and to cook everything a la minute.
The white is going to come up around.
Perfecto.
Okay, there's my perfectly toasted English muffin.
Butter wall-to-wall, as we like to say.
All righty, Canadian bacon.
You want cooked white, and soft runny yolk.
And now we're going to drench
the hollandaise sauce, it's pretty light, feathery.
Brunch is in fact the hardest shift.
No other service here is that fast with such delicate product.
The fragile egg.
Fast and finessed, that's my gig.
I'm... I'm here for you.
But, an omelette is an omelette is an omelette.
It's a perfect representation of what can happen to eggs
when they're cooked perfectly.
Eggs at room temperature,
not cold out of the fridge.
I'm going to do three whole eggs.
'Cause I like to do three whole eggs
and then one yolk.
- Okay, let's do that. - We don't have to do that.
- Let's do that. - All right, okay.
Just a touch of water.
I use a fork instead of a whisk because you don't want
to incorporate air into it.
Essentially you just want to homogenize it.
You want to bring it together.
It starts to lighten up a little bit in color.
To me this is ready to go.
And I have not added any salt into this at all.
There we go.
Want it to all come together, no color on the bottom.
They're not runny on the inside.
Really kind of the beauty of the whole thing is
it's just eggs and butter, but, by technique
it kind of really elevates it to a really beautiful texture.
This is key, so it's shaped.
Just give it a little bath from the homemade salted butter,
just enough to make it shine.
The only salt that's been added to it,
we're adding to it right now.
To me, that's a good omelette.
Alain Passard called it an oeuf chaud froid.
"Hot/cold."
The egg is cut, the white is dumped out,
and the yolk remains in the egg.
Pinch of quatre épices,
a mixture of black pepper, clove, cinnamon,
and ginger.
Salt,
chives.
And then the egg is floated on a simmering pot of water.
The yolk will be hardened around the edges, yet still liquid,
but, warm in the center.
On top of this will be piped a very light cream
seasoned with sherry vinegar and salt.
And on top of that will be a couple of drops of maple syrup.
Take your spoon, put it through all the layers
all the way to the bottom, and bring your spoon up
through the sweet, the salt,
the sour, the bitter,
the hot, the cold, which you have all in one bite.
Truly extraordinary dish.
What I'm going to make is a tribute to Chef Passard.
It has our spin on it now,
but, it's still shows where we came from.
The first thing we do is prepare the eggshell.
One of the criteria of doing it here at the restaurant
is to make sure that the egg is razor cut.
I just kind of squeeze the eggshell a little bit,
and I get my knife in here.
And if you did everything correctly, it's going to pop right off.
Just like that.
The membrane's out, it's been washed out
and cleaned on the inside, razor sharp edge.
Just the yolk.
We needed a savory cream,
what we came up with some Meyer lemons.
You just take the juice.
After it all cooks down, you have a very basic paste.
You can even see that the peels are left whole.
And now we're going to make the cream.
CrÃ¨me fraÃ®che.
I have the Meyer lemon crÃ¨me fraÃ®che,
and now equal parts of heavy cream.
We're going to whip it.
Fairly critical stage here.
We're looking for whipped cream at a particular state
where it's soft peaks,
but, it still maintains a shine.
A softness and tenderness is the taste of luxury.
It's starting to become a whipped cream,
and it's thickening up.
See how it's falling off in lumps off the whisk.
First we're going to season these up.
The yolk is the richness,
a couple of grains of fleur de sel.
We like to say in the kitchen it's like you're counting
eight grains of salt.
It doesn't have to be eight grains,
but, if your mind's thinking that,
then that's your control.
Ninety-eight chives.
This is the fun part in cooking.
The egg yolk lowers the center of gravity.
What that allows it to do is to float on the pot of the water
like a rubber ducky in a bathtub.
And to me, that is perfectly cooked.
It's set around the edges, but, it's still loose on the inside.
A hot poached yolk, sea salt, chives,
savory cream,
made with crÃ¨me fraÃ®che and Meyer lemon.
It's perfect when it leaves a little nipple
in the very center of it.
Beautiful, aromatic coriander honey,
coriander flowers.
And this is the finished dish right here.
I thought this was a perfect dish.
Its beauty was underneath.
You had to go in to find it.
Is this a typical breakfast in Argentina,
or is this a typical breakfast for you?
This is a breakfast for me.
I love it in the early morning.
Especially I have big breakfast like this here.
Mm-hmm.
Is that good or, you need more ham?
Let me see. Yeah, that's wonderful.
What I'm going to do now is I'm going to get my ham
in the coffee.
Oh...
So, you're putting the ham in the coffee.
Yeah.
This is not just regular coffee, it's reduced, right?
It's really reduced, yeah, it's very bitter.
It's really bitter.
- Before it dries, you see right now, - Mm-hmm.
so it's still slightly juicy, I take it off.
Oh, it smells so good.
Okay, we're going to do the eggs now.
I wish I could have breakfast like this every day.
This is awesome.
I'm always shocked at how you can go any place on this globe,
and I can't get any more remote than here,
and all of a sudden there's this dish
that's really familiar to me.
That color is beautiful.
It's a beautiful thing to watch.
Just a little pepper.
Just a little pepper, and then I love to salt
from a distance when I cook outside, you see.
Because I really like the way the salt falls.
Never seen anyone...
burn country ham and then deglaze it
with coffee, it's crazy.
I think it makes a good breakfast.
It's beautiful.