The magic of eggs and mayonnaise

 

By Cullen328 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107438072

It seems cheeky to talk about eggs when the prices keep going up because of avian flu, but Amazon (always a good price guide) has some for under five dollars a  dozen and free range eggs for just over six. I got some free range at Central Market recently for about the same price. For the sake of the hens, I always buy free range or grass fed or prairie raised. Caged hens live an awful life, and cage-free is not much better. It just means that they are crammed into overcrowded, huge commercial hen houses. If you have a friend with chickens, that’s best. Remember, if you get fresh eggs straight from the hen, they don’t have to be refrigerated—nature’s protective coating is still on them. That’s how most eggs are handled in Europe; in this country we sterilize and destroy that barrier. But if you handle fresh eggs, you must be sure to wash your hands—and wash the egg with soapy water before you crack it.

I have a new favorite appetizer, using eggs and mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is a staple in my pantry. I put it on everything and go through quart jars at an alarming rate. If you are among those misguided people who don’t like mayonnaise, forget this column (one of my daughters is in that group).

My new find is eggs mayonnaise—or, since the idea came from France, oeufs mayo. It’s simply a hard-boiled egg coated with mayonnaise. Of course, the New York Times recipe requires you make your own mayo, but I think you can use any good brand. I like Duke’s. And everyone has their own boiling method, but this is what I do: cover eggs with cold water, an inch above the top, and add a splash of vinegar. Bring to a boil, reduce to strong simmer and time for an exact eight minutes, and then drain, run cold water on them, and dump about two cups of ice on them. Let them sit until cool enough to go in the fridge. And always peel under cold running water—I was astounded to find one of my sons didn’t know that. He was hunched over the kitchen counter, picking the shell off tiny bits at a time.

By Cullen328 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107332346

A recipe for oeufs mayo was first published in a French cookbook in the thirties and made its way to the States by the sixties, though I have never seen this dish on a menu. In the late twentieth century, when cholesterol concerns were high, the eggs began to go out of fashion in Parisian bistros, so a French chef formed the Association de sauvegarde de l’oeuf mayonnaise. Today the society to preserve eggs mayo is still active. The current president, grandson of the founder, claims that although the dish looks simple, it is quite complex and the timing of cooking the eggs is crucial. The white should be firm, but the yolk retain just a bit of creaminess.

Slice the egg in half lengthwise, salt and pepper cut side to taste, turn it over on serving plate and coat with mayo. You want the mayo to be thin enough to coat but not so thin it will run off and puddle. You can thin with a tiny bit of water (unimaginative), milk (okay, but …) or buttermilk or lemon (my recommendations). Add at almost a drop at a time to get the right consistency. Serve on a bed of lettuce and garnish with minced herbs or paprika if so inclined or serve with crudities.

And then there are scrambled eggs, one of my go-to dinners when I am eating alone. My new find is mayoneggs. Beat two large eggs with a tablespoon of mayo and salt and pepper to taste until well combined and no white streaks show. Melt two teaspoons butter in a medium non-stick skillet over medium heat, add eggs, and stir gently until creamy and fluffy. I love soft-scrambled eggs, which these should be, but my family all cook eggs until they are hard little bits of concrete. So they yell at me to come get my eggs out of the skillet while theirs continue to cook. I did once try to scramble eggs with cream cheese and would not advise that, but a bit of diced smoked salmon is always good.

And as long as I’m on the subject of eggs and mayonnaise, I might as well throw in egg salad, one of my favorite lunches. Once a friend was coming for a light supper on the front porch (when I had a porch) and I fixed what I thought was a real treat—egg salad sandwiches with a slice of smoked salmon. She blanched when she saw it. Turns out she eats mayo but hates eggs. For those of you who like egg salad, here’s my favorite recipe—the easiest I’ve ever found and so good. This makes four sandwiches or servings, so I often halve it.

Egg salad

6 eggs, hard boiled

3-4 Tbsp. mayonnaise

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

2 Tbsp. dill pickle relish

Salt and pepper to taste.

Mix everything together and chill before serving.

 

Salmon en croute

Salmon en croute
A professional chef would make a much
more attractive finished dish,
but this tasted great.

En croute! The very name fascinates me. It’s strange, because I’m not particularly a bread or starch eater, but I love things in a crust, from Shepherd’s Pie to Beef Wellington, although the latter intimidates me, and I have never tried to fix it. I delight in pasties, yearn for empanadas (no olives, please), relish hand pies.

I am also a salmon lover. I could eat it in various forms five days a week—roasted, grilled, baked, in a salad, straight out of the can. So salmon en croute is a dream dish for me. For some time, I’ve been collecting recipes for this delicacy, determined to try it. The most logical recipe I found was by someone who just followed instinct and put the ingredients together in the way they wanted. That, finally is what I ended up doing, one Saturday night when I was home alone. I hadn’t exactly planned this meal, so I had to use what was on hand.

The recipe starts with a goat cheese spread, for which I am indebted to my neighbor and good friend, Jaimie Smith.

Baked goat cheese dip

By Jaimie Smith

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

8 oz. goat cheese, softened

2 garlic cloves, microplaned or minced

2 tsp. Italian seasoning (I used crushed dried Italian herbs)

½ tsp. kosher salt

¼ tsp. red pepper flakes

½ cup Parmesan or Pecorino cheese, grated, divided

Use a wooden spoon to beat cream cheese and goat cheese together until well combined (this may be the hardest part of the recipe!). Add garlic, seasoning, salt, red pepper flakes, and ¼ cup Parmesan or Pecorino.

Scrape into a baking dish (approximately one quart size). At this point, you can cover the dip with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to two days.

Preheat oven to 400^o and while oven heats sprinkle remaining Parmesan over top of dip. Bake until lightly brown and bubbly (15 minutes). Let it cool a bit—when it first comes out of the oven, it is mouth-burning hot. Serve warm with crudites, crackers, or baguette slices. Refrigerate leftovers.

Warning! I had this twice as an appetizer, and it is so addictive that both times I ate way too much and couldn’t finish my dinner. And I wasn’t the only one guilty of that.

Salmon en croute (amounts need not be precise--go with whatever works)

One sheet puff pastry

Goat cheese spread, about half a cup

½ 6 oz. can salmon, broken into small chunks

Spinach, either fresh or canned, equivalent of a half can

1 Tbsp. melted butter

Defrost one puff pastry sheet and lay flat on floured work surface. In center of sheet, form a circle of goat cheese spread. Top with drained chunks of salmon. I know gourmands will want fresh salmon, but I was using what I had, and I have high quality canned salmon that I order by the case from a fishermen’s coop in Alaska. Top that with spinach—I happen to love canned spinach (a hangover from my childhood), so I used a half can, well drained. I know some will want to use fresh, and that’s fine, though I think you should sauté it first and add cooked spinach to your salmon. Otherwise, the amount of raw spinach you could fit into the pastry wrap would cook down to nothing. Aim for between a half and a full cup. You just have to see what amounts work for the dish you are building. Sprinkle the spinach with salt.

Fold corners of pastry up over the top of the ingredients, making it look as neat as possible (not the kind of cooking thing I am good at). Brush all over with melted butter. Bake in pre-heated 400^o oven for 15 minutes or until crust is evenly browned. Let cool before cutting.

Serves two generously, four as an appetizer. Since I was only feeding myself, I had leftovers and they were as good if not better the next day. But you must heat and crisp in a toaster oven.

Cut to show the layers

This is an experiment I’ll repeat. Confession: I was more than a bit proud of my accomplishment.

Bon Appetit!

 

Some things just don’t need updating

 

 

 

          

Cottage pie
Photo by Mary Dulle

A day late but maybe not a dollar short: I usually do my cooking column on Thursdays, but all my attention was on my dog yesterday, so here’s the column I meant to write last night.

Scanning through the most recent copy of one of the few major cooking magazines left, I came across a recipe for Caribbean Shepherd’s Pie. Wrong, I thought! Absolutely terrifically wrong! Shepherd’s Pie is of British origin—there’s some disagreement among Shepherd’s Pie “scholars” about whether it came from Scotland or Ireland, but it was definitely the United Kingdom. And the dish calls up an image of a shepherd tending his flock, not a mental picture that translates easily to the Caribbean. Now I know much of that territory was once part of the far-flung British empire, but still.

Shepherd’s or Cottage Pie is a pretty basic dish—meat and vegetables in gravy, either surrounded by a crust or covered with mashed potatoes. Again “scholars disagree” about the names—some say Shepherd’s and “Cottage are interchangeable, but others insisted the meat in Shepherd’s Pie is lamb, the recipe originating in Ireland, and in Cottage Pie is beef and reflects either Scottish or British origins. According to one theory, the dish started in Scotland with a pastry crust but when the Irish fixed it, they added the potatoes, because they had aplenty. The vegetables traditionally are the root vegetables of winter—turnips, carrots, etc. In our country, most cooks use lighter vegetables—peas, carrots, corn, green beans.

So what distinguishes Caribbean Shepherd’s Pie? The Ingredients are pretty close to the usual, although there is a whopping 10 cloves of garlic and onions plus green onions. Breaking with tradition, though, the recipe calls for habanero chiles, ginger, tamari (a soy sauce made from miso paste), coriander, and thyme—to me, that’s a lot of discordant flavors in one dish. Plus the traditional ketchup. And the potatoes are whipped with coconut milk, which may be there for health reasons or may be an attempt to add another exotic ingredient. (You can tell I have a bit of bias working here.)

Others have tried to update what started as a homely dish, cozy comfort food on a winter’s night. Celebrity chefs from Tom Parker Bowles to Alton Brown and Emeril Lagasse have published their versions of the pie. Parker Bowles (yes, he is Camila’s son and therefore the stepson of King Charles) adds red onion and olive oil, both of which might be all right, but then he shows his culinary snobbishness by adding Thai chilies. Yet another chef with aspirations to greatness adds more discordant spices—rosemary, thyme, and cinnamon—and three glasses of red wine, stirred in a half glass at a time (and this is supposed to be an easy dish). Some recipes call for cubed meat, others ground; Martha Stewart avoids that dilemma by just calling for two lbs. beef (on her website, cubed is called for but the direction is omitted in her early printed versions of the recipe).

So what’s the average cook to do? I say, keep it simple and omit the chilies. One expert I read also said, “Choose on herb, and us it liberally.” So here’s the recipe I have used for my family for years. They seem to like it.

Shepherd’s pie

1-1/2 lbs. red potatoes

¾ c. shredded sharp cheddar, divided use

1 lb. lean ground beef or ground lamb

2 Tbsp. flour

4 c. frozen mixed vegetables—your choice; I prefer corn, green beans, and sweet peas)

¾ c. beef broth

2 Tbsp. ketchup

¼ c. shredded sharp cheddar

Heat oven to 375^o.

           Boil potatoes and mash with cream and butter (use a dollop of sour cream if you wish. Stir ½ cup grated cheddar into hot potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Brown meat in skillet. Stir in flour and cook briefly. Add vegetables, ketchup, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in beef broth and simmer until mixture thickens.

Spoon into a deep-dish pie plate or an 8 incj square baking dish. Cover with mashed potatoes. Bake 20 minutes. Sprinkle remaining ¼ cup cheddar over the top and bake another 3-4 minutes, until cheese melts and casserole is bubbly. Serve six, but only if they’re not hearty eaters.

A green salad is really good with this.

The moral of this story is a thought I find myself increasingly repeating in this column and in my own cooking: not all traditional recipes need to be updated. Some of those recipes from the fifties and sixties are jut fine the way they are. Not necessarily, the “salad” with hot dogs in jelled pickle juice, but maybe the pot roast I do with onion soup mix or the tuna noodle casserole I learned as a teenager. Please let me know if those recipes interest you.

Here's to old-fashioned, home cooking—American food, with all its varied international origins.

 

Texas Caviar - CORRECTION

 

            Yesterday, while stretched thin from worry about the dog and dealing with computer problems (my mouse wouldn't work), I posted the recipe for Texas caviar but left out an essential ingredient: the vinegar which gives it flavor. This morning, I am glad to report Sophie's fever is gone and she's eating, and Colin fixed my mouse over the phone. So I am a happy camper--and here is the corrected recipe.

Since I blogged about caviar last week, I thought it an easy transition to talk about Texas caviar this week. I thought everyone knew about Texas caviar, even non-Texans. After all I first ate it at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame Café in Santa Fe (now long gone). But a friend, a relative newcomer to Texas, wrote to ask what it is when I casually mentioned I’d made some. Simple answer: it’s marinated black-eyed peas. But there’s a story behind the dish.

The year was 1940, and Helen Corbitt, who would become the shining light of food service at Neiman Marcus, was working as an administrative dietitian at Cornell Medical Center in New York City. She had wanted to become a doctor, but her father informed her that because of the Depression, her family could not afford medical school. She majored in home economics at Skidmore College and embarked on a career as a dietitian. But she was unhappy with her life, longing for something more. Her job search was fruitless until an offer came from the University of Texas to teach a class in quantity cooking and manage the university faculty tearoom, which functioned as a laboratory for home ec students. When she got the offer, so legend says, she roared, “Who the hell wants to go to Texas?” She later amended that, saying she only learned to swear after she came to Texas.

She came to a land of brown food—beans, steak, bourbon in a brown bag—and she was appalled at how much her students didn’t know about cooking and food. Beef was barbecued, chicken-fried, or well done; potatoes were mashed or fried and topped with a glop of cream gravy; salads were wedges of lettuce topped with an orange dressing. This was the culinary landscape over which, in the next almost forty years, she wrought tremendous changes.

When she was just three weeks in Texas, she was challenged to create a banquet menu (if memory serves, it was for 300 people), using only products native to Texas. So she invented Texas caviar This is her original recipe—I just made it this week to use up the leftover New Year’s black-eyed peas, and it was delicious.

2 cans black-eyed peas

1 cup salad oil

¼ cup red wine vinegar

1 clove garlic

¼ cup thinly sliced onion

½ tsp. salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste.

           Drain peas and put in dish with a cover. Add remaining ingredients and stir to mix well. Refrigerate at least two days before serving and up to two weeks. Remove garlic clove after one day.

           The internet has countless recipes for Texas caviar with various ingredients—tomatoes, corn, lime juice, cumin. But the above is Helen Corbitt’s original recipe. Great as a dip with corn chips or serve as a salad in lettuce cups. And think of all the good luck you’ll have!