- And for the kitty, we have specialty.
(phone rings)
Oeufs a la Jenny avec Cocoa Krispies.
Mm! (lips smack)
- [Man] Jenny, it's your parents!
- Yeah! Wait 'til I tell them!
- Hey, what's up guys.
Welcome back to "Binging with Babish".
For this week,
we're celebrating Jess's birthday a week early
with a dish from her childhood
I've been promising I'd make for years,
Oeufs a la Jenny avec Cocoa Krispies,
or eggs according to Jenny with Cocoa Krispies.
With the main ingredient being eggs,
my mind immediately goes to mousse.
Well, it looked like
it was maybe chocolate mousse on screen.
So we're gonna start by whipping one cup of heavy cream
in your brand spanking new stand mixer
that's already broken.
Luckily, I am not an unsentimental person
and I'm not going to so easily
discard my longest-owned object.
The prodigal son returns.
We're coming up on 12 years together.
Anyway, what was I doing? Oh right, cooking.
Beating that cream to stiff peaks, putting it in a bowl,
and keeping it in the fridge until we're ready to use it.
But no longer than an hour or two,
otherwise the cream is gonna start to deflate.
Next up, we got four and a half ounces
of quality dark chocolate that we're gonna chop up
and plop into a double boiler
along with two tablespoons of butter.
And this recipe, courtesy of Simply Recipes.
Get that water simmering,
making sure it's not touching the bottom of the bowl,
stir frequently, and melt into a smooth glossy consistency.
Then we're separating three eggs,
placing the whites in the bowl of the stand mixer
and the yolks into a different thing.
Then with your wire whisk,
whip the whites until white and wispy.
Once doubled in volume,
slowly sprinkle in two tablespoons of sugar
until an inverted whip yields appointed peak,
which means your meringue is down to hang.
Meanwhile, your chocolate mixture should have cooled off.
Mine is down to 112 degrees Fahrenheit
but once you've whisked in your three reserved egg yolks,
you might notice something strange happen.
It looks like the eggs have cooked or curdled,
but they haven't.
Our emulsification has broken.
Much like a pan sauce,
adding some water to the situation always helps.
In this case, a couple of spoonfuls of our whipped cream
should get things looking back to normal.
Now we're gonna start adding our ingredients in stages.
First up, half our beaten egg whites,
folding them in carefully so as to not deflate them.
Followed by half our whipped cream,
the other half of our egg whites,
and the other half of our whipped cream.
Adding in stages and folding gently should yield a light,
fluffy, delicious chocolaty mousse
which we're gonna spoon
into the serving vessel of our choice.
I'm sorry I couldn't find such a fancy cat bowl.
Top with a mountain of canned whipped cream
and of course, Krispies of the cocoa variety.
I realize this is probably pretty advanced
for a child to have made,
but let's see if my oeufs live up to the childhood dreams
of Oliver and Company's biggest fan, my fiance, Jess.
So honey, what do you think?
Do you feel like you're eating the thing
from the thing it's from?
- [Babish as Jess] Oh my goodness. It's perfect.
You've really outdone yourself.
Don't change a thing.
- All right, honey.
I appreciate you coming by and now I guess we do the thing
where we make everything from scratch.
First up, puffed rice,
putting the crisp in Cocoa Krispies since 1958.
First we just gotta cook some long grain white rice
per manufacturer's specifications.
Once cooked, let it cool,
and then spread it out on a parchment lined baking sheet.
The goal here
is to dry out each individual kernel of rice completely.
So get them separated and spread out as best you can
and pop them into a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven,
preferably with convection.
Only taking it out to stir
and break up the rice three to four times
during its two and a half hour stint in the oven,
until you have cooked rice that resembles not cooked rice.
This might seem a little weird,
but it's the process that makes the rice puff up
when we deep fry it in some very, very hot oil,
425 degrees Fahrenheit, in which the rice will puff
and float to the surface in about five seconds.
Then we gotta fish it out quickly before they get burned
like the unfortunate fellows you see in the front of my pan.
Let them drain on paper towels
and then toss them with sweetened cocoa powder.
And then, in theory, we should have homemade Cocoa Krispies.
But in practice, not so much.
Deep frying gave them a very savory flavor
that I don't think plates so nice with the chocolate.
But don't worry, we'll still put those to good use.
Now, my idea for the beefed-up Oeufs a la Jenny
was to make Oeufs a la Neige.
First things first,
I had to make a chocolate creme anglaise.
If you want to see how to make creme anglaise,
click the link in the upper right hand corner right now
and add some chocolate while it's still hot.
Let it cool for two hours in the fridge.
And then we're whipping the egg whites
into a stiff peak meringue with two tablespoons of sugar,
scooping that meringue into quenelles
that we're gonna poach in 185 degree Fahrenheit water
for about four minutes, flipping halfway through.
Drain on paper towels
and serve in a pool of the chocolate creme anglaise,
sprinkling with a bit of our homemade Cocoa Krispies.
Now, the reason I'm kind of breezing through this recipe
is because I don't think it came out very good,
but let's see what Jess thinks.
- [Babish as Jess] Oh my goodness! That's wonderful.
So light and ethereal but rich and luxurious.
Tell me something, Sugar Bush,
why you being so hard on yourself?
- I don't know, I just wanted to make something
that Oliver would have loved.
- Well then, Silly Billy.
Sounds like you need to make a version for cats.
- Well, folks, it's a Babish first. Cat food.
I got some chicken livers here
that I'm sauteing until lightly browned,
half covering with water
and gently simmering for about five minutes,
or until fully cooked.
Now, cats can't eat sugar or chocolate
so we need a different flavor pattern
to cover their Rice Krispies,
which hopefully justifies this use of my food processor.
I'm also going to use it to process our cooked livers,
along with enough liver water to make a nice, smooth,
cat friendly stand-in for chocolate mousse.
I left a little of the cat treat dust in there.
And let me tell you something,
this stuff does not smell great.
So that must mean that we've made cat food,
which I'm gonna cool off in the fridge
while I toss my plain puffed rice with my cat treat dust.
Lastly, for the topping,
I decided to make more egg white meringues,
this time without sugar.
So pretty much just beaten egg whites,
which I'm likewise rolling into quenelles and poaching,
this time a little longer
to make sure that the eggs are thoroughly cooked.
Once everybody's cooled off,
because my cats will most certainly not eat anything hot,
we're plating up the chicken liver mousse,
poached meringue thing, and cat treat dusted rice puffs.
An Oeufs a la Jenny avec Cocoa Krispies, just for cats.
So, let's see if we have any takers.
I think Roe was pretty freaked out by the egg puff
and Toulouse is just freaked out in general.
But Bucky was raised on the mean streets of Brooklyn
so she's a little more adventurous.
Oh, hey babe.
- [Jess] Hey, you wanted me to record my part, right?
- No, I got it.
(upbeat music)
(Jess laughing)
Do it in practice, he said, okay?
I don't want to do this. This is my job.
(Babish laughing)