The Cloud Egg by the French Cooking Academy

welcome back everyone so this week for our starter we're going to be making a recipe that has been making a comeback uh lately it's an egg recipe to start it is called the cloud eggs it is actually based on an old recipe that is known in France as the eggs or Sydney it's been around since the 1900 but in recent time it's kind of made a comeback people have made it a different way and it's got now a new name now I've tried both of the version but I think there was something missing in original and the new version that he serves on a piece of toasted bread now if you don't know what the cloud egg is it's is very simple it's an egg that is separated with the egg white on one side the egg yolks on the other side you bit the white into a mering bake it first in the oven and then add the egg yolk on top of a bit of cheese at the last minute what we're going to do in this recipe here is to revisit these famous Cloud eggs I'm going to add my Personal Touch we're going to look at the technical aspect of that recipe because it's quite interesting um on how it is made and perhaps you've never tried it so why not so an interesting recipe these Cloud eggs it is called in French the lerage and the concept is very simple you separate the egg white and the uh the egg yolks we're going to bit them you add a bit of cheese salt and pepper and for the original recipe it is usually baked into in individual Ramer can or cocot like this you get the egg whites in there and you bake it and when it's got a nice and color you put your egg yolk and you're pretty much done a topping of cheese and and that's it the new recipe called the cloud eggs is the same except that you serve this on a piece of toast I found both version to be very very dry and just lacking one element which is moisture so what I decided to do here is to revisit and try to elevate This Cloud eggs to a new level and for that I've used the simple techniques from French cooking thinking first of the floating islands this is a dessert where we whip the egw into a merang it's sweet it's poached on a on boiling water and it is then placed on a bed of custard okay so you got a pond of liquid the rub Brothers is a second example with the suf recess where you have a large dish you got the sule Bas that is baked on his own and then placed on a bed of cream with cheese and again you get that kind of so that Sur that moisture and that moisture is I think what's missing so I'm going to use the same technique as the suf recess because we're not far from making a sule it's just uh simpler to make okay so let's go into the demonstration and see how we're going to build this one of the thing I wanted to do with that Revisited version of the uh the cloud egg is really to make something versatile and also to improve a little bit on the taste so for the taste I'm adding a layer of uh cream with cheese on here this is the cream but you could use for instance tomato you could use a bed of Basham spinach anything that you want so it's really to give you option so that you can make it yours for the rest we got the salt paper I've grated the cheese and I've separated the eggs so this is the egg you on here it stays in the shell for now and I've got the egg white I strongly recommend you do this with two or three eggs because you want to have enough egg egg white to be able to beat them uh you know correctly otherwise with one it's going to be a bit tough but I'm still going to attempt it so now let's go through the process the first thing we're going to do before even beating the egg white is to prepare the cream so the cream I've got my little pan you see it's handy a little copper pan again for small amounts got quite a few tablespoon of good quality organic cream in here and all I'm going to do is to season with some cheese so I'm going easy with the cheese it's not something over the top it's really just the seasoning and we're going to warm this up okay slowly now the other thing uh that we're going to be taking care of here is already to preheat the oven and the oven temperature is very important when you bake egg whites and being sweet or savory the one thing that can happen very fast is that they get dry so they can color they can look good but they're going to be a bit crunchy and a bit dryish so a lot of recipe recommend a very low temperature that's going to require very long cooking time in the oven and I'm kind of sitting in the middle I'm trying the the oven at 180° I've tried 200 was too much so 180° uh I think it's going to be the sweet spot to allow you to do these things in about 10 minutes tops okay so Prett the oven 180 we're going to be warming up the cram but as I said you can use uh you know tomato sauce or anything like this okay so just bring it to the boil and that's it my cream has reached the boil I've turn the head off and it's resting on the side this is not important the important uh step in that recipe is actually right here making the egg white to bat them really really firm and this is crucial for the success of the recipe if it's not firm enough it's not going to look as great and it may not work at all so I've got here my egg white is only one going to be very hard a pinch of salt and crucially what I would advise when you start you add a drop of lime of lemon juice in there not much with just the drop and that's going to prevent you for overbeating the egg white so what I'm going to do here okay is to place this in the maximum speed and be the heck until it's really firm one egg took me a 4 minutes and what do we mean by stiff is this you see my egg white is staying in there that's ready so once you're here it is really just a flavoring I've got salt already I'm going to add some pepper and I'm going to add some Parmesan because it's I like it because it's salty so sprinkle of it in there it's a bit like like I said it's like a Sul and all what you're going to do here is the typical you're going to be taking a spatula or something and without and trying not to break these that are extremely fragile that's it we make a bowl and you're done I'm going to put this in the baking dish let's do this so all what I'm going to do I've got my hot cream and I'm going to put I've got what two tablespoon just a layer of it there next what I'm going to do is to simply try to put this thing into a bowl in the middle and then shape it a little bit okay it doesn't have to be uh particularly good looking you shap it like a bit of a ice bag and you want a little cavity in the middle just a very slight cavity because we're going to be placing that egg yolk after in there okay you don't need to go over the top you know what that's it that is going into the oven at 180° it may take about 5 minutes I'll give you exactly the time it take so straight after 3 to 4 minutes of cooking you're going to take your uh Raman out of this and what we're going to do is try to gently place H in there that's going to drip down boom it's disappearing under there and we're putting this back into the oven with plenty of cheese to finish to cook my egg is ready I put it on the plate just to show in the oven and let's try it straight off so no time to waste my Revisited Cloud egg is here as you can see this is how it looks like and you see what I mean by the cooking when you use a high temperature it tends to crisp up so that was only like about 4 minutes to start followed by 2 minutes so almost like 6 minutes in total you can see the egog is meant to be still a bit runny it's hiding inside sometime it stays at the top and I have not pour extra cream yet that I've got here on the side in My Pan just in case as you know me you know always like my cream so so I've got some Cutlery here of all kinds of I'm not too sure if I use you you know should we use like a a spoon maybe to cut this open not to show what you want to see first um so see it's very fluffy it's bit like a sule or like a cloud like a cloud and you see like the aalan like the floating island you've got this bit here and immediately I'm going to add some more sauce because I love it and I'm going to try just just the white with the parmesan and a bit of cream not bad you know what that is the missing link the moisture and the sauce in there definitely good now we managed to preserve the egg yolk is totally there like a normal eggs and unfortunately I'm going to have to break it open just to show you it's still running okay and then we start to mingle it's like a deconstructed sule a little bit got the eggs not not B it's nice and fluffy and you know for me I really like this addition of cream that you have so you can roll everything the crispiness with the cream with the eggs I'm going to add a bit of more sauce There up but that's it this is my Revisited version of the Cloud eggs let me get that piece yum so there it is this is how you make the cloud egg if you've never seen it I've never tried it before I think it is really one of these dish that you need to try at least once and this revisit version is for me the ultimate one that is very versatile because not only you have this extra moisture into the dish but it also gives you plenty of option to make it yours so you can replace the cream by tomato sauce like I said you can replace it by a bisham you can put a bit of vegetables of spinach whatever you like and you can come up with plenty of little things that are interesting for the tips I would highly recommend you make these at least uh in a c using two egg whites or free because you can have plenty of egg whites to make a nice fluffy merang that you can flavor of the cheese the cheese can be changed I'm using parmeson because it's nice and dry you can use a cheddar you could even want to use blue cheese if you wanted there's plenty of things you can do so have a go try the cloud eggs leave me a comment in the comment section to see how you go what did you like and perhap what is your own version as for me I will see you of course next week for a special uh main de it was actually a request from how one of our student David that has a chicken recipe that the entire family has been making for years so we're going to taste it at us you B you me and you're giving me Wind and Rain some kind of butterfly baby you midn whip up [Music] my [Music] me don't baby and myself [Music] baby you you giv me Wind and Rain kind of butterfly

Channel: French Cooking Academy

Views: 252,791

Keywords: french food, french food recipes, french cooking video, French cuisine, cooking techniques, culinary education, recipe tutorials, classic dishes, french cooking, chef stephane, French Cooking Academy, french cookbook, french recipes

Id: Was8fJZTo_Y

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024