SCRAMBLED EGG SANDWICH
on hong kong style white bread

My friend’s family owns a very famous cafe in Hong Kong called the Australia Dairy Company. I saw pictures of the famous egg sandwich and was thoroughly unimpressed. How can scrambled eggs pressed between two slices of bread be so good? But the massive following proved that this sandwich was something special. So I thought, hey, I know how to cook some pretty good scrambled eggs—let’s give it a try.

First: the eggs. I’ve studied how to cook eggs by reading On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. Basically, the secret to really good scrambled eggs is seasoning them before hand (salt helps the proteins coagulate, so if you season them after they’re done cooking, they will over-coagulate) and cooking them low and slow; constantly moving the eggs with a spatula, creating ribbons, and then turning off the pan while the eggs are still runny and letting them finish by residual heat. It’s not necessary to use butter and cream, but I do cause it yields silkier eggs. I also add a dash of fish sauce and sugar. Not enough so that it’s overwhelmingly fishy or sweet, but those two secret components really enhance that eggyness. If everything is done right, the result will be the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had—trust me.

Second: the bread. Wonderbread certainly wouldn’t do. You could easily crush it into the size of a golf ball with little effort, meaning the bread is not very dense at all. I figured the smartest thing to do was to buy white bread from a Hong Kong-style bakery. It’s almost twice as expensive as its cheap American cousin, but it holds its shape, it’s noticeably more flavorful, and it doesn’t get soggy easily.

Once I combined these two simple ingredients, I finally understood. It was some crazy David Blaine shit going on in my mouth. I might not ever have the opportunity to try the official sandwich from the Australia Dairy Company, but I do now appreciate their sandwich.