I had intended to launch this blog today with a post on roasting asparagus. Timely, helpful. Brimming with potential controversy. Illustrated.
First I couldn’t find the charger for my camera battery. Somewhere between recognizing this sorry fact and finding the charger, I pulled the battery out of the camera and misplaced it. My camera is idle, and so is my blog.
It’s probably all for the best, since I always thought that if I ever wrote anything about cooking I’d start by writing about eggs. It’s not that I’m an expert on cooking anything, including eggs. It’s just that eggs are something almost everyone cooks. They have a general air of primacy, including being finalists in the “which came first” competition. They are exceptionally delicious and easy to prepare well. And yet, in my experience, there are a lot of sup-optimal eggs being served up out there. So I always thought maybe I could do a little egg education. Which I will not call “eggducation,” because I’m a better person than that, and I don’t want to hurt your brain.
This is not a post about how to cook eggs. It’s just a recipe for a very nice egg dish that I made for me and the HDGF last Saturday afternoon, back when my camera had a battery – good times! These are poached eggs on a bed of spinach and green garlic.
True confessions: I paid $1 a stem for the green garlic. (That’s a lot. At least, it seems like a lot, to me.) Many other allium types would, I’m sure, be splendid in this dish.
So: 3 stems of green garlic (dark green removed, rinsed thoroughly and sliced fairly, but not obsessively, thin); 2 or 3 large handfuls of spinach, no stems; 4 excellent eggs; cheese (see below); olive oil; salt and pepper.
Start heating the water for the eggs in a wide pan. Saute the green garlic and salt till translucent; add the spinach and sautee until well and truly cooked. I am not a fan of undercooked spinach. I’ll have to get back to you on the whole oxalic acid question and how it fits into the need to cook spinach pretty well. In the meantime, take my word for it, and cook it a few more minutes after it wilts.
Keep the spinach in the pan so it stays warm. Poach the eggs. I do not need to explain this process, as the Google supplies an excellent explanation right here, on something called “What’s Cooking America.” Because nothing says “Homeland Security” like poached eggs. (Their home page is currently enjoining us to celebrate “dad’s day” with “men’s foods” – eep!)
I shaved the cheese, as I usually do, with a vegetable scraper. This dish turned out to be the killer app for a wonderful creamy pecorino from my farmers’ market, but I’m sure Gruyere would be great, or Parmesan. Put greens on the plate, cheese next, eggs next, and pepper over the top. Warmed baguette was the bread of the day.
As you can see in the photo, I poached the eggs pretty firm – this was three minutes. I think that was right for this dish; a very runny yolk wouldn’t have had the right balance with the cheese. The overall effect of discrete parts that harmonized well was excellent.
And that’s my first post! Considering how long I’ve been fake-blogging at SNS-based services, and considering how many half-written drafts are chilling back stage, this was murder to write. But that’s ok. It’s got an egg in it.
Eggcellent first post! Your dish looks so yummy!
Allium + Ovum = NOM. In Chinese cooking, people scramble eggs with Chinese chives.
Thank you!
And… I don’t even know what Chinese chives are. Link me up? Be a Featured Expert?
Chinese chives are more commonly known as garlic chives. They look like long green grass and taste like a more robust version of the regular chive. It’s a versatile vegetable that is often used in dumpling fillings and stir-frys. You must have had it at some point.
I have had it! I didn’t know it was called Chinese chives, though I’ve seen it on menus in Chinese restaurants.
And now we see whether, as WP warns, a 4-comment thread breaks my style (I’m afraid I set it to a 4-level limit because they warned me about that. But we can always start a new thread.)
Awesome post title BTW. Have you seen “The Secret of Life of Mrs. Beeton?” Quite entertaining.
I have not – I must! I have the copy of Mrs B’s that my grandmother brought from England in the 20s
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of blogging! Look forward to reading more.
Thank you very much, Nancy! *wibbles*
Oooh, green garlic, is that like the garlic shoots that you get in the srping if you have a patch of garlic that nobody harvested about three years ago and then it just kind of sits there because you’re not perfectly sure that it’s garlic? though it smells very garlicky and eventually produces something that looks and smells and tastes and feels precisely like smallish garlic? You know, it’s sort of shaped like a reed on the top, but has a round stem on the bottom? That stuff is worth a *dollar a stem*? Holy cow, we’re rich!
Seriously, I say you should do a Very Special Blog Entry wherein you cook up a meal from the garden here. We’ll let you have all the garlic stems you want, for free.
Garlic shoot-grape ragout (now with more grapse)?
Green garlic actually looks like either thick scallions or thin leeks. But I do think it’s the same plant as reg’lar.
And thank you for the invitation – I’ll cook your vegetables any time, baby. With chervil.
PS last I knew, you didn’t have a digital camera. But if you can beg, borrow, or steal one, and take some picks of your garlic shoots (in ground, on table), I’ll do some research and incorporate into a post on NYC Greenmarket economics.
Hi Jane! We have a digital camera now! But I don’t have an easy way to get photos from that camera on to one of our computers that’s attached to the internet (P.’s computer is not, for complicated reasons.) So it’s a multistep process and unlikely to happen quickly, but yes I will try to do this. I’ve been meaning to do more garden documentation anyway.
Cool! Thanks!
Excellent first post.
Keep it up! Eggs are The Fabulous.