Unexpected Whole Food

1.I was at Barack Obama's Inauguration today....wait....let me savor that wonderful food again. I. was. at. Obama's. inauguration. today.....

Ah. Ok. So because of that, I wasn't planning to do any blogging. But two things happened.

The first, a funny thing, involved a lamb. Lane and I are splitting a lamb from Groff's Content Farm and I needed to call their butcher today, because they do not get the inauguration off. In butcherese, the call was not very unusual. Miscellaneous directions on subdividing meat and bones. No, I don't know the ear tag number of the creature. Yes, I'd like the intestines. Yes, I'd like the head and any organs. And if anyone else doesn't want their organs, I'd be happy to take those, too.

The thing is, this type of conversation held in a dense throng of N million people pretty darn far away from an actual farm, well, draws looks. One person standing by asked me where I was from. "Silver Spring, Maryland." Oh. It was pretty funny.


2.The second thing involved a simple, hardboiled egg, was new even to me, and has set me thinking.

I guess because security teams thought trash cans might be a risk, they removed them all from the Mall. For sustenance, I had brought some cheese, cashews, and hardboiled eggs. At about 9, having been out since 6:30, I decided on an egg.

I broke it by dropping it on the ground and dusting it off. Then I went to find a trash can to peel it into. There weren't any. I didn't have anything to put a shell into. And even though other people were dropping things left and right, I couldn't bear the thought of littering. So I ate the eggshell.

I have never done this. The only time I've eaten eggshell is when someone didn't do a very good job of it and there were shards in the egg or salad or whatever. So when I tried I fully expected it to be a fail and for me to sort of spit it out after choking on sharp shards. This did not happen. The shell chewed easily and was easy to eat and swallow. I had no idea. I'm not sure why we don't eat eggshells, or what this means going forward. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'll know more tomorrow.

Update: No ill effects. So I deem hard-boiled eggshells to be edible. Who knew!

Update 2: I gave Phil two eggs in his bento for work. He tried them with the shells. He said it didn't make too much of a difference one way or another in terms of "better" or "worse," but it did have the benefit(?) of grossing out his colleagues.

Emergency Steak and Egg Breakfast

Saturdays are shopping days for me, so Saturday breakfast usually is an emergency amalgam of whatever I have left over from the week. Also, I like to keep dirty dish generation to a minimum so there's not a lot of kitchen-cleaning to do to spoil an otherwise nice Saturday morning.

Frequently that means veggie egg pie, but I had leftover steak from last night so decided to make some steak and eggs with a sauce. The first picture shows my mis en place - which basically cleans out my fridge. The second shows the finished dish, including the sauce. Dirty dishes included one fry pan, one small mixing bowl, one spoon, and one spatula. So, a success!

Courtney's Emergency Steak and Eggs
Serves 2

This recipe reflects what I used this morning. You can be creative, but less so than with egg pie. The spinach or some sort of cooked green is essential. Switching out meats or using no meat at all would be fine, though.

2T ghee for frying (ghee really does make a difference, but you can use any animal fat)
1 slice of onion
3 large mushrooms
100g (3-1/2 oz) spinach leaves
~150g leftover steak (bone removed) approx 2 cm thick
4 eggs
few twists black pepper
paprika for garnish

For sauce:
2T yogurt
1/2T sour cream
1/2T mayonnaise
1/2T brown mustard (I used Koskiusko)
1/2t Worchestershire sauce

Mix sauce ingredients. If the ingredients are coming straight from the fridge, use a microwave-safe bowl and microwave it on 1/3 power for 30 seconds - just enough to take the chill off. Set aside.

Warm serving plates.

Remove stems from spinach and wash leaves. Slice mushrooms. Chop onion into a medium dice. Cut steak into four pieces by cutting it first in half and then through the middle so that you have 4 slices approximately 1 cm thick. (please be sure your slicing knife is sharp before you do this!).

Melt 1T of the ghee in a heavy large frypan until just fragrant. Add onions and saute 2 min. Add mushrooms and saute until they are golden, 3-4 min. Add spinach and saute until limp. Divide between the two plates (see picture).

Return pan to heat. Add 1/2 T ghee. When melted, add the steak, putting the cooked side down and the side you just exposed up. Saute (do not flip) just long enough to reheat. Put 2 steak slices on each plate. Pepper to taste (you should not need extra salt with this dish, but if you want it, put it on at this time).

Return pan to heat. Add the other 1/2 T ghee. When melted, fry the eggs in the ghee to your desired degree of doneness.

Put one egg on each of the slices of meat. Divide the sauce evenly among the four eggs, gently spooning the sauce onto the eggs. Garnish with paprika. Serve right away.

As an aside, I like my eggs with the yolks definitely runny and, in a dish like this, with the whites a little runny, too. Phil likes his yolks only a little runny and his whites completely firm. So I start his eggs cooking earlier and flip them much earlier than mine, which I only flip right at the end to get a little bit of a skin over the yolk. But because of that and the sauce, I recommend serving this dish in a shallow bowl like I've used or in a plate with a decent rim to it.

Remaining post-Christmas Leftovers

So breakfast and lunch will finish up the leftovers from Christmas. The pictures show breakfast, in process and done. The brown bits you can barely see at the bottom of the pie plate in the first photo are the leftover solids from making ghee yesterday. The rest is diced leftover veggies plus some sage I had on hand. I use this generic egg pie recipe for making breakfast and lunch egg pies. It's really easy and incredibly flexible.

Basic Egg Pie

miscellaneous "summer" or leafy veggies - mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini, onion, spinach, fresh herbs, almost anything of that nature
1 - 2 T butter or butter solids or ghee or lard
4 - 6 eggs
1/2 - 1 c milk or buttermilk
spices to taste
shred cheese or panko or nut meal
lard or butter to grease baking dish

If using a conventional oven, preheat to 350F.

Dice or chop the vegetables. Grease a 9" pie pan and put in the fat, cut into pieces. Add the diced / chopped veggies. Microwave on high 3 minutes. Remove from microwave.

Meanwhile, combine the eggs and milk or buttermilk. with just enough so that it is thinned but still mostly eggy. If you use buttermilk, the mixture will seem to congeal slightly.

If you are going to give the empty egg-milk mixture pan to a four-legged family member as a treat, put your spices directly on the cooked vegetables, and then pour the mixture over. Otherwise, whisk the desired spices into the egg mixture and then pour over. Be creative! Some common spices I use (not all at the same time!) are curry powder, cayenne, sage, italian spices, red and black pepper, you get the idea. For the pie in the picture, since the fresh sage still has a lot of flavor I just used some coriander, marjoram, and dry mustard.

If desired, sprinkle a light layer of shred cheese, panko, nut meal, or something similar on the top. You can also dust the top with paprika if you want it to brown slightly.

If using a conventional oven, cook until set (time will vary based on number of eggs used, etc.)

For the Advantium, cook 10 min at U=4, L=3, M=3. I use this same setting no matter what combination of eggs and veggies I have and it is fine.

Christmas Dinner Course 5 - Eggs Florentine

Comfort food, indeed, and sort of an adult spin on the creamed vegetables that were an ubiquitous part of holiday meals in my family - although creamed pearl onions were the standard fare.

(It's now 5:20 and dark, so the picture quality from my cell phone is getting a bit dicey. But I think it's clear enough to see what's going on)








Eggs Florentine

(adapted from the Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School 1913 Meal-a-Day recipe cards)
Serves 2

I bunch fresh spinach
2 eggs
4T shredded Parmesan
1/3 c bechamel sauce
dash paperika
dash nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a small shallow casserole.

Cook the spinach. Cool and chop.

Put into the casserole and make two depressions. Put 1T Parmesan into each depression. Crack open an egg into each depression. Sprinkle 1T Parmesan and put about a teaspoon of the sauce over each egg. Pour the rest of the sauce over the spinach around the eggs.

Cover and bake until set (approx. 15 min.). Put 1 egg and 1/2 of the spinach in each of two dishes. dust the egg with paprika; sprinkle nutmeg around on the spinach. Serve hot.