Tomorrow is Snark's birthday, so I was making some deviled eggs, and at long last, I've found the timing that did the trick for hard-boiled eggs. For some reason, the times most people suggest for the supposedly foolproof cold-start method seem to give me overcooked eggs. Very sad! Today's, though, were just right--no grey ring around the yolk, yolks cooked through absolutely but no more. It didn't hurt that they were farmer's market eggs. The yolks were a brilliant yellow as well as being cooked the perfect amount. Here's what worked for me:
Eggs, size large, right out of the fridge into the bottom of the pan, nestled in so that I couldn't have fit another in a single layer in the pan in question, but not really packed tight, and covered with cold water about 3/4" above the tops of the eggs. Pan partly covered, over a high flame. When I noticed the water had come to a boil (because I heard a little clunk of the eggs bumping), I turned the flame off immediately and covered the pan entirely. Then I set the timer for twelve minutes. When it went off, I used a slotted spoon to transfer the eggs to a bowl of ice water, with plenty of ice. If you want to be really particular, you can make an effort to center your yolks before you boil the eggs. I've read a few different suggestions for this: store the eggs tip-down, or tip the carton on its side, or give the eggs a spin before you cook them. Anyone have personal testimony about the effectiveness of any of these techniques?
If you'd like my exceedingly simple deviled egg recipe, read on. (I expect everyone already has a perfectly good idea of how to make deviled eggs, but hey, why not?)
All this past week, it has been warm and springy. My refrigerator is full of garlic scapes and baby greens. But today the sky is grey and I wish I had a piece of pumpkin pie.
Not cooking, but generally food related. I've been stimulating the economy again, both directly and by proxy.
My lovely mother sent us a box of delicious cheeses as a prize for my having filed my dissertation. Mm. I know Zingerman's is expensive, and people I know who have lived in Ann Arbor tend to feel that they're overhyped as well as overpriced, but they really do make great presents. And I'll tell you, the cheese is great.
In anticipation of the weeks when the farmer's market is bursting with so much fresh produce that we can hardly carry everything we buy, I've ordered a few more of my favorite reusable bags. These are exactly what I want in a shopping bag. I love that they stuff into their own attached stuff sack. You can never lose the sack, and you don't fuss around with rolling the bag up just so -- just quickly stuff it in. When stuffed, they are small enough to toss into any old corner, so that you always have one or more on hand. The bags themselves are strong and lightweight. They hold a lot and conveniently fit the metal frames that hold plastic shopping bags open, found at the end of many supermarket checkout lines. They hold up well to being used ungently, week after week. The only trouble is that I've lost a couple in the few years since I bought my last batch, while also finding more places where I'd like to stow one or two (my suitcase, for example). So I'm replenishing the stocks.
While I was at it, I also ordered this collapsible market basket, because I'm quite terrible at managing my purchases without one. I don't do a good job of shopping in descending order of sturdy denseness, so I'm always having to try to shuffle things around in my bags in the middle of the market, while also trying not to get in anyone's way, and then accidentally dropping my eight plums directly on top of my tiny lettuces anyhow. We'll see how the basket works.
Do you have any favorite sacks, baskets, carts, or other useful reusable containers for food shopping?
While I wait for our farmer's market to catch up with the external evidence that it is spring, I find myself unable to resist some of the not-so-very local or organic offerings at our local Whole Foods. The shrink-wrapped little flat of twelve Ocean Mist brand baby artichokes was perhaps not as glorious as the bin of perfect, squeaky-fresh, bright green baby chokes doubtless frolicking in the fresh air at my old Berkeley farmer's market as we speak, BUT it was pretty exciting to me, and so I bought it.
The really groovy thing about miniature artichokes is that the chokes themselves are not developed, so you have more options for eating them gloriously whole. I've had wonderful teeny ones that were minimally trimmed of even their spiky outer leaves, fried in olive oil, in Italy, and if you have the chance to do the same, let me be the first to tell you not to hesitate. However, this is more the sort of thing I like to let other people do for me than to do in my own home on a weeknight, and I had a feeling, too, that our agribusiness arties were a little less tender in their outer leaves than some, so I opted for a different method.
Trimming and roasting are both easy-peasy, and S. said: "hey! that tastes like fancy restaurant food!" I'm not precisely sure what he had in mind there, but he did definitely mean it as a compliment. Serve with something that has a mild and simple flavor -- simply dressed pasta is a good choice -- so that you can fully appreciate the effect of the cynarin, which makes other foods taste curiously sweet.
The trouble with celery root is that you lose so much of it to peeling. The same gnarled, hairy form that makes it look so much less appetizing than it truly is also makes prep a bit of a hassle and disappointment. Dirt and tough skin are trapped in deep, narrow crevasses that you must cut out ruthlessly, which means you can lose up to a third of the original mass to your preparatory ministrations. However, my recent reading of Lidia Bastianich's Lidia's Family Table has taught me that there is another way.
You can boil or roast the root whole, let it cool a bit, and then the skin will come right off, just as with a potato. You'll still have to do a little bit of excavation in the deeper cracks, but you'll lose much less of the tasty edible part, and it will be much quicker and easier. This works great for gratins -- rather than peel, cut and parboil, you use this method, then slice up the cooked globe and continue on your merry way. It's a snap. And for salads, it's just perfect. Brilliant.
Spring has sprung! It's wet and cold here, but green things are poking up from the ground, which is springy enough by comparison to what came before. In honor of April, tonight for dinner we had a pound of asparagus, roasted in olive oil and then dressed with lemon and salt, accompanied by scrambled eggs with onion jam. Delicious. Also delicious: the several quality minutes Snark and I spend in the kitchen afterwards, dipping our fingers in the oil and lemon at the bottom of the roasting pan.
ROAST ASPARAGUS
This hardly even counts as a recipe. Just heat your oven to 425° F and prep as much asparagus as you like -- the usual way, by washing it, then snapping off the woody ends where they naturally break when you bend each stalk. Pour a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into a roasting pan and add the asparagus. Roll the stalks around until they're well coated and sprinkle with salt. Roast until at least the tips (and possibly more) get toasty. How long depends on the thickness of your stalks and how cooked you want them to be. We had fairly thick, not that recently harvested stalks, so I opted to cook them to super-roasty and super tender-y, which took twenty minutes. For more bite and/or thinner stalks, adjust accordingly. (Don't forget: thinness isn't a sign of particular quality in asparagus. Early in the season, stalks tend to be fatter; later, they're thinner, but generally the main thing is that they should be nice and green and fresh.)
Then gorge! That's what asparagus is for.
I certainly won't hold it against you if you don't. I've been silent for an awfully long time, again. What a fickle and unfaithful blog friend I've been! In my defense, in the meantime I've been doing a few slightly taxing things, like finishing and defending my dissertation, but honestly, that's not much of an excuse -- look at how much other people manage to do! In any case, I thought I'd dip my toes in to tell you a little bit about what I've been:
Cooking: A lot of soup and upma. Soon there will be spring vegetables, right? Soon. SOON, PLEASE, SOON.
Drinking: Organic elderflower cordial from Belvoir Fruit Farms. Pathetically, I have trouble bringing myself to find tap water sufficiently enticing to stay hydrated, so I turn to fizzy water and lovely cordials like this one to avoid turning into a complete crispy husk. I've loved elderflower for a long time, and it's become much more chic since I first discovered it, so there are elderflower options everywhere these days, it seems. This cordial's an especially nice one, very clean and fresh tasting.
Contemplating drinking: Elderflower liqueur, because hey, elderflower.
Digging: The terrible brilliance of this moderne cat scratcher. Cats like scratching carpet! People who shop at Design Within Reach like those Flor individual carpet squares! Also, they like bent plywood! Add it all up and you have invented a perfect $300 purchase for the pet-owning rootless cosmopolitan.
Wanting: New dining room chairs. My champagne tastes are proving slightly problematic on this one.
Reading: Lots of Wilkie Collins, many many novels set in WWI, and David Beaver's excellent Presupposition and Assertion in Dynamic Semantics.
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