Coi chef Daniel Patterson says you’ve been making gourmet scrambled eggs all wrong
In his new book, Coi chef Daniel Patterson urges home cooks to experiment in their kitchens—starting with basic breakfast
It’s hard to think of a dish as elemental as scrambled eggs. The only requirements for the original two-ingredient recipe (if you don’t count seasoning) are fat for cooking and eggs. Though plenty of ways exist to make them more ambitious, with fancy ingredients and elegant presentations, it seems impossible to think of a way to change them beyond the three-step process of cracking, whisking, and pouring into a hot pan.
But Daniel Patterson has figured it out.
The San Francisco-based chef has earned Michelin stars and a James Beard award for his fine-dining restaurant, Coi. He is a co-founder of Locol, the California fast-food spot whose mission statement is to save the world by offering well-sourced, affordable burgers, soft serve, and coffee in underserved neighbourhoods.
Patterson is likewise on a mission to give home cooks a point of view in their own cooking. In a cookbook just out this month, The Art of Flavor (Riverhead Books), he has teamed up with perfumer Mandy Aftel to teach readers to be confident in their flavour combinations, rather than blindly relying on recipes. (Patterson compares this to the way people unthinkingly follow GPS directions in their car.)
Patterson’s goal is for home cooks to cook without recipes. “Chefs make multiple decisions simultaneously when they’re creating dishes. This book allows people to make their own recipes. Much of that is functional: determining you want acid in a dish, and then deciding from options like Champagne vinegar, or balsamic, or citrus. Brown sugar or honey or a juice if you want sweetness. Once you get a sense of what works for you, you gain confidence.”
“There are a million recipes out there, but hardly any that explain why you’re mixing this with that, or that empower you. This book is about the ‘whys,’ about knowing what your flavour target is, and how to hit it,” says Patterson. “If you like spicy foods, high acid foods, dishes with that rich umami flavor, then get a handle on the ingredients that push that forward.”
Take sweet potatoes, he says. One of his favourite dishes in the book is for a soy-glazed version. Using three ingredients (sweet potatoes that are roasted, plus melted butter and dark soy sauce), Patterson transforms a staple side dish into one with sophisticated layers of dark, sweet, and salty flavours. “It will change your Thanksgiving,” predicts Patterson.