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Bret Thorn
With breakfast being the only major daypart to show any signs of growth in this moribund economy, more restaurateurs are seeking ways to spice up their morning offerings, and the American Egg Board has commissioned chefs with particular expertise in breakfast to help do just that.
Through its “Eggscellent Chefs” program, the commodity board is teaming with the experts to promote their product. Recently, this team of chef-ambassadors shared their thoughts about the versatile, inexpensive protein with Nation’s Restaurant News editors.
Seth Bixby-Daugherty of Real Food Initiatives in Minneapolis, J.J. Kingery of Wild Eggs in Louisville, Ky., Michael Henry Moorman of m.Henry in Chicago, and Courtney Parks of Open City and The Diner in Washington, D.C., spent a morning in New York cooking up dishes ranging from breakfast wraps to stratas to a deviled egg salad sandwich.
This is the third group of chefs to participate in the yearlong ambassadorship, and the first year in which the focus has really been on breakfast.
The chefs said they got ideas for their dishes in many places. For example, Kingery, who made the deviled egg salad sandwich, said the inspiration came from his boss, who loves deviled eggs, and his wife, who loves egg salad.
He spiced it up with a pickle that he already used at his restaurant in Bloody Marys.
The rest, he said, is what his mother taught him to put in deviled eggs—mayonnaise, mustard, salt, white pepper, sugar, onion powder and paprika—although Kingery used both yellow and Dijon mustards, and smoked paprika.
The chefs also taught the NRN editors to cook a Spanish strata with serrano ham and romesco sauce; BLT quinoa topped with a poached egg; a breakfast wrap with ranchero sauce; wild-mushroom fettuccine topped with a poached egg; a fried-egg sandwich on toasted sourdough; polenta baked eggs with pancetta and hazelnuts over mixed greens; a Caribbean-spiced omelet; a grilled steak with Yukon gold potato salad and an egg; a scrambled-egg calzone; and eggs Benedict with preserved tomato, grilled portobello mushroom and porcini emulsion.
