Sunday, January 20, 2008
Cooking is my passion, cooking is my life; so when I discovered a problem with a common ingredient I felt compelled to alert the public. For years in both commercial and home cooking I have used pasteurized egg products ( you know, the egg mixture that comes in a milk carton); but recently I purchased and used pasteurized whole eggs, for an outrageously rich rice pudding I was preparing for a Food History class, in Morrisville, NC. The pudding is cooked, and the egg whites are whipped and folded into the luscious mounds of whiteness to add richness and fluffiness. The problem was the pasteurized egg whites would not whip or stiffen to a peak no matter how long I beat them. I was left with something that looked like watery translucent mucus. I had to discover why, so I did a bit of research.
R. A. Knight, K. Mears, T. L. Parkinson and J. Robb wrote an article entitled The baking properties of pasteurized whole egg in 1967 in the International Journal of Food and Science and Technology and discovered the secret to my dilemma. “A comparison was made of raw and pasteurized egg from twenty-eight processing plants. The average composition of the raw egg agreed closely with published data on commercial shell egg but the pasteurized samples contained slightly less fat and total solids.” Pasteurizing the egg every so slightly, lead to a loss in baking quality causing the performance to be slightly inferior to that of none pasteurized raw egg.
According to the Federal Drug Administration pasteurized shell eggs are actually heated in warm water baths using controlled time and temperature, to destroy any bacteria that might be present, but the process does not cook the eggs. It does however affect the egg white, since egg white is sensitive to high temperatures. Therefore it was safe to assume that egg white proteins are susceptible to heat damage which may adversely affect their properties. The Federal Drug Administration suggested the addition of whipping agents such as sodium lauryl sulfate and triethyl citrate to restore foaming properties. I had neither of these artificial foaming agents on hand so I did the next best thing and used good old fashioned none pasteurized egg whites.
The next time you reach for pasteurized eggs thinking you are purchasing a product void of contaminants, which may in fact be true, do so with a grain of salt particularly if you need the egg whites to enhance that hollandaise, soufflé, or Rice Singapore, a gift from the late-great Chef Dione Lucas’ classic cookbook, Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook: Classic Recipes, Menus and Methods as Taught in the Classes of the Gourmet Cooking School. It is truly the most decadent rice pudding known to mankind.
I could not end this blog without providing my version of Rice Singapore. The recipe is long and involved but well worth the work.
Rice Singapore
(Adapted from a recipe by Dione Lucas)
Serves 6
Read through this recipe carefully before beginning.
Ingredients:
2 quarts whole milk (cold)
1 pint heavy cream
3 egg whites, whipped to stiff peaks
½ cup washed rice
2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin (2 envelopes)
1 ½ cup sugar
½ vanilla bean pod (fresh)
2 teaspoon Ronald Reginald's Vanilla Melipone® Mexican Vanilla (http://www.ronaldreginalds.com/)
2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 pint fresh strawberries
3 tablespoons Framboise or Kirsch
- Wash and drain ½ cup of Carolina rice (http://www.carolinaplantationrice.com/)
- Wash the rice until the water runs clear)
- In a large, heavy pot pour in 1 quart of cold milk
- Add ½ cup washed rice, scrape out the vanilla beans tiny black seeds and reserve for flavoring the whipped cream, then add the ½ vanilla bean pod to the pot
- Place the pot over low heat, the slower it cooks the better (it should cook for about 2 ½ hours)
- Stir often until the rice begins to absorb the milk
- Then each time you stir begin adding a small amount from the second quart of cold milk
- You will gradually add the milk until the rice has completely absorbed all of the milk
- Remember, don’t rush this, the slower this is done the more delicious your pudding will be
- When all of the milk is absorbed, stir into the thick rice mixture 1 ½ cups sugar
- Rub the mixture through a strainer or put it through a food mill
- Soften: 2 tablespoons of unflavored gelatin (2 envelopes) in ¼ cup of cold water, and 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice
- Add gelatin-lemon mixture to the strained rice mixture
- Stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved
- Put a large metal bowl over another bowl of ice
- Stir rice mixture over ice until the mixture becomes very thick, gently fold in stiffly beaten eggs whites, combine thoroughly, set aside
- In another metal bowl that has been placed over ice, beat 1 pint of heavy cream and the scrapings from the vanilla bean
- When the cream is thick, fold it into the rice mixture and quickly fill the mixture into a lightly oiled 8-inch ring mold or whatever 8-inch shaped mold you have on hand (I use a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan)
- Cover the mold with greased wax paper
- Place the mold in the refrigerator to set for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight
- Before serving, wash and hull 1 pint of fresh strawberries
- Sprinkle the strawberries with 3 tablespoons of Framboise or Kirsch and serve on top of each wedge of Rice Singapore.
I serve Rice Singapore on my ruby red dessert plates by Crate & Barrel (http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=80&f=12866) Remember any time you are serving a white dessert use either a red or crystal plate. This dessert is definitely a divine dine!
Knight, R.A., Mears, K., Parkinson, T. L., Robb, J. (1967), The baking properties of pasteurized whole egg [Electronic version], International Journal of Food Science & Technology , 2, (2), 143–167.
Lucas, D. with Geis, D. (1964). Dione Lucas Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook: Classic Recipes, Menus and Methods as Taught in the Classes of the Gourmet Cooking School, New York: Bonanza Books.
Egg Solutions: The complete reference for egg products. (n.d.). What effects do pasteurized egg products have on baking? Retrieved July 4, 2007, from http://www.aeb.org/EggProducts/resource/faq.html