Category Archives: Eggs

More American Tuna, Eggs & Whole-Grain Muffins

April 29, 2008 – 8:19 pm

So, I am happy to report that the American Tuna I recently smothered with cheese and wedged between two pieces of buttered bread tastes just as delectable when prepared in a healthy manner. These open-faced sandwiches, made with the same tarragon-tuna salad prepared for the tuna melt plus a couple tablespoons of capers, make a very tasty, light lunch or dinner. Toasted olive bread is an especially nice base.

Additionally, I must report my latest egg preparation: soft-boiled. Yum. The recipe I followed produced perfectly colored and textured soft-boiled eggs. I’m not sure I’m crazy about the method, however, which calls for submerging the eggs in cold water, which makes the eggs, as expected, cold. In any case, soft-boiled eggs atop asparagus, prosciutto and mascarpone-slathered toasts make another great open-faced sandwich.

Lastly, down below, you’ll see another batch of the whole-grain muffins I made several weeks ago. In this batch, mashed bananas and pecans have replaced the Fuji apples.

Asparagus Toasts with Mascarpone, Prosciutto & Soft-Boiled Eggs. To make these toasts, preheat the oven to 400ºF. Slice a loaf of french bread into four 1/2-inch thick pieces. Place on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and toast until golden. Meanwhile, place four eggs in a small saucepan. Cover with cold water, bring to a boil and simmer for five minutes. Plunge the eggs into cold water. After three minutes, peel and slice the eggs. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Blanch one bunch of asparagus for 30 seconds. Spread the toasts with a spoonful of mascarpone cheese. Top each with a slice of prosciutto, a few pieces of asparagus and the sliced eggs. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serves 4.

Open-Face Tuna Salad Sandwiches
Serves 4

1 loaf of olive bread
extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
juice of half a large lemon (about 1½ tablespoons)
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 6-ounce can American Tuna
¼ cup finely diced red onion
¼ cup chopped tarragon
2 tablespoons capers
1 tomato, thinly sliced
1 small bunch lettuce

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Slice the olive bread into four thin rounds. Place on a cookie sheet, drizzle with the olive oil, and bake until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

2. Meanwhile, make the dressing: Whisk the mayonnaise with the mustard and lemon juice. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. Dressing will be thin. Taste, adjusting seasoning as necessary.

3. Place tuna in a large mixing bowl. Add the onion, tarragon and capers. Pour dressing over top and combine mixture gently with a fork. Set aside.

4. Assemble sandwiches: Line bread rounds with tomatoes. Top each with a small handful of lettuce. Top each with a mound of the tuna salad. Cut in half, if desired. Serve.

The 100% whole-grain muffins pictured below are filled with mashed ripe bananas and crunchy pecans. As FarmGirl promised, this recipe can be adapted in countless ways.

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Breakfast Eggs Entrees Vegetarian

Baked & Scrambled

April 11, 2008 – 10:02 am

I wasn’t kidding. I’ve been eating a lot of eggs. But i’ll cool it after this post, because I’ve made a new discovery: American Tuna. I’ll have more to say about the tuna later. For now, I’ll concentrate on the eggs.

So, just a few quick things. Shortly after Easter, a friend forwarded me an on-line Whole Foods newsletter all about eggs … shocker … and I made this recipe for huevos rancheros cups. The recipe was pretty good, but I must admit, baked eggs taste best, at least in my experience, when baked in ramekins. I’ve included two recipes here, one for the most delectable baked eggs — my family makes them every Christmas morning — and one for the huevos rancheros cups, which are fun to make and fun to eat, but not as tasty as water-bath, ramekin-baked eggs smothered with Gruyère cheese, Tabasco and herbs.

Incidently, I’ve slowly been making my way through Heat, and I recently stumbled across as passage, which I’d like to share with you. At this point in the book, Bill Buford, on a quest to learn how to make fresh pasta, has traveled to Italy where he discovered that an egg, “provided it was a very good egg,” was the most important ingredient in the pasta-making equation:

“If the white was runny you knew the eggs had come from a battery-farmed animal, cooped up in a cage, and the pasta you made from it would be sticky and difficult to work with…[These yolks] were pale yellow, like those most of us have been scrambling for our urban lives. But a proper yolk is a different color and, in Italy, is still called il rosso, the red bit, arising from a time when you ate eggs in spring and summer, the egg season, and they came from grain-fed, half-wild, not just free-ranging but virtually proprietorial chickens that produced a yolk more red than yellow, a bright intensity that you can see today if you’re lucky enough to get your eggs not from a supermarket but a local mercato or a small farm.”

Anyway, if you are not sick of reading about eggs, here are links to two articles, one about a New Jersey farm that supplies wonderful eggs to the Fair Food Farmstand in Philadelphia and one about Don Davis, the man who brings the eggs I have been enjoying to the San Clemente farmers’ market every Sunday:

San Clemente’s Sun Post News: Good Eggs Make Good Eggs
Philadelphia’s The Bulletin: Liquid Gold

The Best Baked Eggs
Serves 8

3 T. finely chopped parsley
1 T. finely chopped thyme
1 T. finely chopped rosemary
1 T. finely chopped sage
1 T. unsalted butter, softened
½ cup heavy cream
Tabasco to taste
8 large eggs
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
8 T. grated Gruyère cheese

1. Combine herbs in small bowl. Butter 8 4-oz ramekins with the softened butter. Pour 2 teaspoons cream, 1 teaspoon herbs and a few dashes Tabasco in each ramekin.

2. Break one egg into each ramekin, spoon 1 teaspoon cream over each egg, sprinkle with herbs, season with salt and pepper to taste and top each egg with 1 tablespoon of grated cheese.

3. Preheat oven to 400˚F. Boil water in a teakettle. Place ramekins in baking dish. Pour boiling water in dish so that it comes 1/3 of the way up the sides of the dishes. Bake 10-11 minutes for medium cooked eggs.

For the recipe for the best scrambled eggs, visit the Sun Post News’ Web site:Good Eggs Make Good Eggs

Huevos Rancheros Cups
Adapted from Whole Foods Market
Serves 8

8 (5-inch) corn tortillas
Canola oil spray
1 (15-ounce) can refried beans
8 large eggs
kosher salt and pepper
¼ cup queso fresco or other fresh cheese, crumbled
Tabasco (optional)
½ cup salsa
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and oil a standard 12-cup muffin tin.

2. Heat corn tortillas one at a time in a dry skillet over medium-high heat for 15 to 20 seconds on each side, just until they are soft and pliable. Spray each warm tortilla with canola oil on both sides. Press and fold each tortilla into a muffin cup. Place a small ball of foil in the center to hold in sides of tortillas. Bake 5 minutes.

3. Remove foil and add 2 tablespoons of refried beans to each corn tortilla cup, pressing them down into bottom of cup. Make an indentation in the center of the refried beans and carefully crack an egg into each indentation. Season each egg with a pinch of salt and pepper. Top each with a pinch of cheese and a splash of Tabasco if desired. Bake in the middle of the oven until whites are just set, about 15 minutes.

4. Remove tortilla cups from the muffin pan carefully, using 2 spoons or small spatulas. Top with a spoonful of salsa and sprinkle with more queso fresco and cilantro. Serve immediately.

Don Davis with his eggs at the San Clemente farmers’ market:

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Breakfast Eggs Entrees Pasta Vegetarian

New Theory: Everything Tastes Better With An Egg On Top?

April 8, 2008 – 6:37 pm

I know. My egg consumption is out of control. I can’t promise the end is in sight either, so please just bear with me as I plow through a few more dozen.

On another note, I have a story to recount about my husband that you might not believe. Last night, Ben almost threatened not to accept my “friend request” on Facebook. I know. Unbelievable. It was one of the sadder moments of my life.

This is what happened. Yesterday after dinner, while Ben was washing dishes, I mentioned that I had just become friends (on Facebook) with one of his old hockey buddies. Great, Ben said, and then admitted to feeling bad about not checking his email more often and rarely responding in a timely fashion to “friend requests.”

“You have a Facebook account?” I asked as I typed his name into the search box. “I’m going to invite you to be my friend.”

Brace yourself, this is where it gets sad. Ben turned to me and said, “OK, but don’t expect … ” stopping mid-sentence upon seeing my face.

“What?” I asked. “You to be my friend?”

“Well, it’s just that … it’s just that I’m never …”

It was too late. Ben could utter no words that would repair the damage. “It’s cool,” I said, as the world as I have known it silently shattered. We didn’t speak for like 2 minutes. It was terrible.

When Ben finished the dishes, he hopped on his computer and confirmed my friend request. While my heart still stung, I couldn’t bear the silence, and I appreciated the cyber gesture. I know, deep down, my love of life meant no harm. (I apologize for all the drama … maybe it’s the eggs?)

On another note, I learned on Sunday that one of the vendors (I forget the farm’s name) from Carlsbad will be bringing these zucchini blossoms to the San Clemente farmers’ market every week from now until the end of summer. These might be one of my favorite foods.

I think the best way to prepare them is this: Buy some goat cheese. If you feel like it, season it with salt, pepper, some herbs, shallots, whatever. If you don’t, don’t — plain goat cheese works just fine. Place a small — small — amount of goat cheese inside each one. Don’t over-stuff … it doesn’t make them better. Pinch the flower closed. Place a small amount of milk or buttermilk in a shallow vessel. Place a small amount of cornmeal in another shallow vessel. Heat a nonstick pan over medium fire. Add a mixture of oil and butter. Meanwhile, dip each blossom in milk and then in cornmeal. When the butter begins sizzling, add the blossoms to the pan. Let them cook until golden brown. Remove and serve with anything.Yum.

Also, I just tried the curry spaghetti from Delaney’s Culinary Fresh. I have sworn by the red pepper linguini in the past — still my favorite, I think — but this curried spaghetti was awesome. I didn’t add anything to it, except for some reserved cooking liquid, salt and pepper. Oh, and a fried egg.

And I sort of, though not very meticulously, tested my theory about cooking fried eggs slowly. In a nonstick pan, I heated some butter over medium fire. I added the egg when the butter sizzled. I covered the pan, and after a few minutes, when it looked done through the foggy transparent lid, I removed the egg and threw it on my pasta. There is something really special about an egg yolk over pasta. Or rice. Or salad. Or bread. Or everything, I have concluded.

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Bread Breakfast Eggs Vegetarian

Poached Eggs Over Flax Bread

April 4, 2008 – 10:00 am

So, as you know, I’ve been eating a lot of eggs. I’ve been cooking them in various ways — scrambled, poached, and even baked into tortilla shells (thanks for the recipe, Ann … next Friday I’ll post my results) — and I’m starting to notice a pattern: Eggs need to be coddled. Pardon the pun, but what I mean is that eggs, prepared in any way, need to be cooked gently — slowly over low heat. And, as I mentioned recently, if you start with really fresh eggs all you need is salt, pepper and a splash of Tabasco.

Now, I haven’t tested my theory on fried eggs, but I will, and I’m guessing this method won’t fail me.

As for the bread you see pictured, I’m still in disbelief that it emerged from the oven looking somewhat like a loaf of bread. Let me explain. I had been reading this book about omega-3 fatty acids and became inspired to make flax-seed bread. I found a recipe on the Internet, but the quantities were given in gram form. Not to worry, I converted the grams to ounces, and then from ounces to cups. ( My digital Salter scale is still in storage.)

I mixed together all the ingredients, kneaded the dough briefly — the recipe told me to do so — and placed the ball in a bowl. Twenty-four hours later, the dough had not budged. I couldn’t bear the thought of throwing it away, however, so I dissolved another packet of yeast in some water, let it bloom and then mixed it with some white flour. I broke the flax-seed rock into my new flour-water-yeast mixture and began kneading. After 10 minutes, I placed the dough in a bowl to rise, I hoped, once again.

Twenty-four hours later, the dough had made a little bit of progress, so I threw it in the oven before it could collapse on me. The results, well, let’s just say, were better than I had expected? Made mostly with whole wheat flour and loaded with flax seeds, this bread tastes a little nutty and very wholesome.

Yesterday afternoon, while we celebrated my uncle Jerry’s birthday, Aunt Vicki sliced up some of this bread, toasted it up and served it with butter and orange marmalade. It actually made a nice little snack. And cousin Jay, after slicing the bread very thinly, made a tasty looking avocado and turkey sandwich. The flax bread, although having the effect of feeling “like a steel glove in the stomach,” as uncle Jerry noted, was a hit.

Not much else to report. Here’s the latest military article: Why The Marines? Why Now?

A Few Recent Discoveries For Making Good Eggs:

1. Buy fresh eggs.
2. Use butter.
3. Cook the eggs slowly over low heat.
4. Season with salt, pepper and a splash of Tabasco.

Perfect Poached Eggs

vinegar (a squeeze or lemon or lime juice works well too)
eggs, however many you want
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
Tabasco

Bring a small, shallow saucepan filled with water to a boil. Add a capful of vinegar. Crack eggs, one at a time, into a ramekin or small vessel. Reduce the heat of the pot to just a simmer — seriously, the water should hardly be moving. Gently drop the egg into the water. Turn up the heat to achieve that very subtle simmer, then add another egg in the same manner to the pan.

To test for doneness, remove one of the eggs with a slotted spoon. Gently press the yolk with your finger. If it feels too soft, return egg to water. Cook a total of about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and serve over toast. Season with salt, pepper and Tabasco, if desired.

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Eating Locally Eggs Entrees Vegetarian

Farm Fresh Eggs & A Weeknight Staple

March 16, 2008 – 6:49 am

So, as you’ve likely gathered from recent entries, I’m having a little trouble at the grocery store, mostly in front of the meat counter. I never thought I would reach this stage, but last week at Albertsons, I stared at a package of lamb chops for five minutes before walking away empty-handed. I couldn’t purchase the lamb without knowing how it had been raised. And these days, I assume the worst.

Protein options in the Stafford household, as a result, have been reduced to grass-fed ground beef from Trader Joe’s, fish from the Sunday farmers’ market, organic chicken (which I’m not even that psyched about since the chickens probably lived in less-than-desirable quarters) and eggs from Don’s Farm Stand at the San Clemente farmers’ market.

Now, of the five or six different meals I currently have us rotating on, I most look forward to eating those featuring Don’s eggs. Prepared in any style — scrambled, fried, poached — these eggs taste delicious. Ben swore I had added something special — cheese? cream? — to his scrambled eggs Sunday morning. Don’s eggs, I assured him, need nothing more than salt, pepper and a splash of Tabasco.

I have no doubt that these eggs look — the yolks, as the picture below shows, are a rich, orange color — and taste the way they do because Don treats his chickens so well. Last Sunday, I asked Don what kind of laying hens he raises, and he pulled out a picture he keeps in his cash register. He has some Sextons, but most of his hens are a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a white breed, (the name of which I have forgotten).

His chickens roam around in a spacious area enclosed by wire fencing on his farm in Wildomar. Don feeds them all sorts of things: a high-protein feed he purchases; any apples or produce from the market other vendors cannot sell; and any leftover greens he cannot sell. His chickens, he says, love greens.

I feel so fortunate to have access to a fresh dozen of eggs every Sunday. Before I added eggs to our weekly dinners, I think Ben felt a little starved for protein. I guess I should say, I know Ben felt a little starved for protein. What gave it away? It might have been the Burger King bag he arrived home with one evening just before dinner.

My favorite way to prepare these eggs for the time being is poaching. And when I have leftover rice on hand, never am I happier. I microwave the rice, sauté some greens and poach three or four eggs — dinner can be made in no time.

Poached Eggs Over Rice
Serves 2, with leftover rice

Note: This recipe gives instructions to make brown rice pilaf, but any kind of rice — steamed jasmine or basmati, Uncle Ben’s long-grain converted, or minute rice — makes a wonderful base for a poached egg. Polenta works as well. Serve some sautéed greens aside this poached egg-rice combination for a simple dinner.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon butter
½ to 1 yellow onion, peeled and diced
kosher salt
freshly cracked black pepper
1 cup brown rice (see note above)
1 bay leaf

2 to 4 eggs (1 to 2 per person)
vinegar such as white, white wine, apple cider
Tabasco, optional

1. Place the olive oil, butter and onion in a large, nonstick frying pan, and place over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let sweat for five to 10 minutes or until the onions are translucent and tender. Add the cup of rice, and stir until the rice is evenly coated in the oil-butter-onion mixture. Turn the heat to high, and add two cups of water and the bay leaf. Season with another pinch of salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, cover the pan (aluminum foil works too), and reduce the heat to low. Cook for 45 minutes. Turn off the heat, and let sit, covered, for 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile bring a small, shallow saucepan filled with water to a boil. Add a capful of vinegar. Crack eggs, one at a time, into a ramekin or small vessel. Reduce the heat of the pot to just a simmer — seriously, the water should hardly be moving. Gently drop the egg into the water. Turn up the heat to achieve that very subtle simmer, then add another egg in the same manner to the pan. As the eggs cook, fluff the rice with a fork or spoon. Place a mound of rice on each plate. The eggs should cook for only two or three minutes. Top each mound of rice with one or two eggs. Serve with sautéed greens.

3. Pass salt, pepper and Tabasco on the side.

A sign hanging at Don’s Farm stand at the San Clemente farmers’ market. These eggs are so good. Crack one open, you’ll see. And when you scramble up two or three, you’ll taste the difference too. Farm fresh eggs. Yum!