If you want to judge the quality of a kitchen, start with the eggs. It’s a rare restaurant that can make a masterpiece of the deceptively simple ingredient — but Claridge’s hotel in London is among them.
“How can they serve as many eggs as they do and make them taste so delicious?” muses René Redzepi, the acclaimed Danish chef, in a forward to “Claridge’s: The Cookbook” ($36 at Amazon). The handsome new tome runs the gamut from breakfast to dinner, with critical stops en route for elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea and cocktails.
Redzepi hosted a two-week pop-up of his revered Noma restaurant at the iconic hotel during the London Olympics in 2012 and began each day with fried eggs with perfectly crisped edges, just the way he likes them. And thus it has always been. The hotel’s many illustrious guests — Queen Victoria, Sir Winston Churchill and Jackie O., among them — were likely served the same.
But when acclaimed food writer Meredith Erickson found herself dining on Claridge’s chicken pie four years ago, she was astonished to discover there was no cookbook in which to find the recipe. She’s fixed that, co-authoring the hotel’s new recipe guide with Claridge’s chef Martyn Nail, after hunting through menus “so vintage they felt like parchment in our hands.”
Some of these recipes you’ll want to leave to the experts — Erickson likens the kitchen at Claridge’s (which serves 69,625 breakfasts a year) to a scene from Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” And do you really want to spend three days making croissants? But others will quickly find a way into your repertoire.
Among Erickson’s favorites are the hotel’s silky-smooth scrambled eggs. So many people get this classic dish wrong — cooking the eggs in a skillet so they become dry and rubbery, or adding cheese or onions too early, rather than stirring them in afterward. At Claridge’s, the eggs are cooked in a bowl set in a pan of boiling water, so they neither burn nor lose their moisture. And unlike the croissants, seven or eight minutes are all you need for breakfast nirvana.
Scrambled eggs, Claridge’s-style
- You will need 3 or 4 eggs, depending on how big the eggs are and how hungry you are.
- Thoroughly whisk the eggs in a heatproof mixing bowl that can sit comfortably over a saucepan of water.
- Next, bring said pan of water to a simmer; now place the bowl of eggs over the pan, add a good knob of butter and start mixing consistently with a wooden spoon or a spatula.
- After 2½ minutes, the eggs will start to set around the edges of the bowl. Stirring constantly at this stage so the eggs stay smooth, turn off the heat and keep stirring until the texture of the eggs becomes mousse-like.
- Around the 3½-minute mark, remove the bowl from the pan — remember that eggs will continue cooking even off the heat. When in doubt, always undercook! This method gives the eggs that perfect glossy texture. Serve warm.