(y)our food choices™

Beautiful Brown Eggs

“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

If we are what we eat, Jason and I are pretty egg-y guys. Fresh eggs are a major staple in our meal repertoire. They show up on our plates in a number of forms. Not relegated to weekend breakfast, eggs are our go-to food morning, noon and night. They’re nutritious, economical and oh so versatile. They’ve taken their hits over the years from the anti-fat and cholesterol crowd, but reason seems to be returning to our understanding of these nutritionally dense, healthful wonders. Here are a few of our favorite egg meals.

Boiled

Boiled eggs can become a salad, a garnish for salad, a stuffing ingredient, a companion to diced avocado, or a simple snack on their own with a sprinkle of sea salt.

Salade Niçoise

The best boiled eggs are cooked gently in water that is just hot enough to barely get to a simmer. Use a pin to puncture the “flatter” end of the egg and then ease it into the pan of hot water and leave it to cook for 10 to 12 minutes, depending on the size of the egg. Remove the pan from the heat and cool the egg under cold water. The gentle cooking method preserves the rich golden color of the yolk and prevents that green, sulfurous yolk coating from forming.

Poached

Dandelion Greens Salad w/ Poached Egg

Poaching an egg creates an elegant, creamy platform for rich hollandaise. We love a poached egg on dandelion greens salad with crumbled bacon. And thanks to Lidia Bastianich, we’ve learned to poach them in simmering vegetable soups and served over toasted crusty bread. To get the best results in poaching, we create a hot “bath” of water in a pan that is deep enough for the eggs to sit under the surface. It helps to add a few tablespoons of distilled vinegar to the water. Doing so helps to arrest the dissolving of the egg white into the bath, firming them up into neat white packages. Use a slotted spoon to scoop them from the pan. Crack each egg into an individual bowl or ramekin and then ease them gently into the water one by one. Be sure to keep the egg from sticking to the bottom early in the poaching process or you’ll have a mess when you try to remove them. Poaching takes about 4 minutes. Once removed from their bath, the eggs should be rinsed in cool water to remove any vinegar flavor and to prevent the yolks from continuing to cook. You want them to be just warm and very creamy when you break into them. Take them out of the cooling bath and dry them on a clean, lint free towel before using them. Trim away any strands or flimsy edges – they’ll look nicer if you do.

Eggs "Benedict"

Fried

Frying is the quickest and simplest cooking method. Watch the heat on the pan, though. A very hot pan with inadequate oil will make a quick mess out of an egg.

Fried Egg

Non-stick skillets are wonderful tools for frying eggs, but you still need to use a good pat of butter or a drizzle of bacon fat to be sure you get a flavorful egg that turns easily. Fried eggs with runny yolks are a breakfast classic accompanied by potatoes, hash, bacon and sausage, toast, pancakes and waffles, grits or polenta. Fried egg sandwiches were a childhood favorite and today we might go bigger and add a fried egg to a burger. We eat them on salads, pasta dishes and in soups.

Scrambled

A soft scramble of eggs just might be one of the greatest things on earth. Simply seasoned with salt and pepper and finished with a pat of butter, nothing could be more satisfying.

Soft Scrambled Eggs w/ Bacon

We embellish regularly by adding grated parmagiano or cheddar cheese just as they come off the heat. They’re amazing paired with fresh sliced tomato and bacon on toasted bread. When summer time rolls around and the sweet beautiful tomatoes start rolling in from the farm, these egg, tomato and bacon sandwiches become a regular weekend meal.

Scramble 4

The versatility of the egg manifests the world over in a multiplicity of recipes showcasing this unique food. Eggs provide structure and volume to French sauces and souffles, they create elasticity and resilience in Asian and Italian egg noodles, they leaven cakes and enrich custards. Egg yolks are powerful emulsifiers that provide the backbone to mayonnaise. Still, we return to the scramble at least weekly because they never fail to satisfy in a pinch.

Scrambled Eggs w/ Roasted Peppers

Soft Scrambled Eggs: The Technique

We’ve learned from masters like Julia and Jacque that one never simply scrambles an egg. There’s a technique to keeping them soft and creamy and it requires carefully heating the scrambled eggs in a well oiled pan over low heat. To prevent large, lumpy curds from forming, you have to constantly stir or whisk them in the pan until they come up to temperature and form small, soft uniform curds. If you have the patience, it’s well worth taking your time with them. A 20 minute slow scramble will yield the most delicious, creamy spoonful of delicate savory custard. Take them off the heat and whisk in butter and herbs or cheese and crumbled crispy bacon. Scrambled eggs are dense and dry when overcooked. If you go too far in cooking them, a dollop of sour cream whisked in at the end will temper the toughness and return them to a creamy consistency. Always taste for salt and serve immediately. We keep a pepper grinder, two kinds of Tabasco and a dish of large gray sea salt crystals on our table – each adds its own flavorful embellishment to the preparation.

Whatever your take on the egg, we’re sure you’ll find the following resources of interest. Be bold in your consumption of eggs. The nutritional value of this simple food far outweighs any risk from cholesterol.

American Egg Board

Incredible Edible Egg

Mayo Clinic on Dietary Cholesterol

Cheers, Steve & Jason

Hearty Cold Weather Stews!

Jason cooks Julia's Boeuf Bourguignon!

We buy our beef from Michael Evenson, a California cattleman who keeps a small, humanely raised, pastured herd of cows that graze on a windy bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the northern coast. It doesn’t taste like beef as we’ve come to know it. Michael’s beef tastes rich and wild. It reminds us of the wild elk Steve’s dad hunts in Idaho. Michael’s cattle produce meat that is just a bit leaner, but the fat is rich and flavorful and free of antibiotics and hormones.

Classic Recipe

The Boeuf Bourguignon you see pictured here is Jason’s take on Julia Child’s classic recipe. It was perfect. We lucked out when we thawed a large rump roast (Julia’s first choice cut for the recipe) we’d been saving for just the right occasion. We used half of the monster roast to make shredded beef tacos. The other half became the most delicious beef stew I’ve ever tasted. Here it’s served over buttered pappardelle and finished with a dusting of chopped parsley.

Recreating Julia’s recipe here isn’t happening. But we’re happy to share this link to the recipe, offered at no cost by Julia’s publisher, Knopf Doubleday. Don’t be afraid of it. The finished product is worth every step.

A Favorite

Boeuf Bourguignon can’t be beat, but it isn’t an every week kind of recipe for most of us. We discovered this Bon Appetit stew recipe years ago on epicurious.com. It’s now a standard and we cook it often. The original recipe calls for lamb, shiitake mushrooms and Chianti. But we’ve adapted it to suit our tastes by using beef or wild Idaho elk, a variety of mushrooms and whatever non-oaky red wine we have on hand. The meat is the star of this dish, but flourishes of orange zest and kalamata olives make this savory simple stew worthy of any home cook’s repertoire.

Beef and Mushroom Stew with Tomato-Red Wine Sauce

Meat and Potatoes

olive oil

1 pound beef or other red meat, cut into ¾-inch cubes

6 ounces fresh mushrooms (shiitaki, button, crimini) stemmed, cut into ½-inch pieces

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

2 3X1/2-inch strips fresh orange peel (orange part only)

2 large garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary

1 14 ½-ounce can whole, peeled tomatoes

1 cup red wine (preferably one that hasn’t spent a lot of time on oak)

10 or so kalamata olives, pitted and halved

Heat the olive oil in a heavy large pot over high heat. Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper and add to the pot. Saute meat until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Cook meat in batches to avoid steaming. Add mushrooms, onions, orange peel, garlic and rosemary. Saute until onion is golden, about 5 minutes. Crush tomatoes and add to pot with their juices and the wine. Bring the stew to a boil then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer until the meat is tender, about an hour and a half. Add olives and simmer uncovered while sauce thickens, about 5 more minutes. Adjust seasoning and serve with your favorite starch. The original recipe recommends serving over orzo. It’s a terrific choice as is pappardelle, polenta, mashed potatoes, rice and grilled or toasted bread. It keeps well, tastes better as it ages over a couple of days and freezes for quick dinners later.

Like nearly every other “classic” recipe, beef stew is more a concept than a set of rules. Browning then braising, seasoning and serving – nothing could be simpler but the idea is to create big flavors. Experiment and see for yourself just how malleable the dish can be. Make it your own.

Cheers,

Steve & Jason