the back story to this salad is so incredibly bizarre that i’ve hesitated to even tell you about it. but i’ve never been much for keeping things on the down low, so let me share with you the abridged version. this was the audition for masterchef, a new reality show coming up with gordon ramsey. and it got me to the next round. which got me to the next round. which had me filling out the 30 page background check, shooting a home video, and writing the requested 3rd person bio. then came the call from the casting director, "claudia, it’s looking really good for you."

then 3 days later i was out.

but hey, that’s show biz!

i have another songwriter seminar happening in my home where i do all the food for 3 days for 15 people.. i’m busier than i’ve been in a long time and there’s just a lot going on in my life right now. but still, i wanted to share with you this salad. mostly just because it was truly excellent.

i had been on the fence about even bothering to audition for the show and made the decision that i was going to do it at 3 pm the day before. this meant i had to get up at 6 am and drive the 3.5 hours to atlanta to be at the viking store ontime. so i used what i had in the house. romaine, eggs, fresh bread, celery, lemon zest and juice, good green olive oil, chili flakes and garlic. the orange strips are bottarga – of course.

the croutons were from the innards of a baguette toasted in olive oil and butter with sliced garlic. when the garlic lightly browned i removed it and used the now chips as another garnish. the leaves were arranged, the lightly boiled eggs were roughly chopped, the dressing of olive oil, zest, juice, fresh minced garlic, chili flake and salt was emulsified and drizzled, and the bottarga was shaved with a vegetable peeler. thinly sliced celery gets added along with the garlic chips and croutons. i’m stressing the obvious here because it’s SO SIMPLE that there’s not much else to say!

i would like to add that bottarga has made my world a better place. i’m quite enamoured with the stuff.

gordon would have loved this salad. oh well…

a sampling of some fresh picked wine berries, huckleberries and wild blackberries – a gift from my friend jack on my birthday last month

it’s not that i’m not cooking. because i am. there are gatherings of friends and just plain hungriness resulting in well, dinner. i even sometimes whip out the nikon and snap a few lame shots but these days not so much. and i’m not sure what’s come over me. but just the thought of posting on ceF was beginning to feel like ‘work’ and god only knows we wouldn’t want that to happen to a nice woman like me… after all, my lack of ambition is my greatest luxury. (i stole that line from my friend emily and have been using it ad nauseum but only because it is SO TRUE.)

but we’ve been to chicago and then i went to cleveland. dallas is this week and seattle comes next. i’m doing the 4 day cooking gig again come the first of october and then i’m off to nyc…  and all i want is to go back to italy. is that asking so much? IS IT? but honestly, i’m not complaining. it’s a charmed life. the past week or so has pretty much revolved around trips to the park in much appreciated cooler than normal temps, so after a 9 week hiatus i’m back on the bike and fighting the fat (albeit somewhat of a losing battle).

but mostly – if i could just say, i’m so deeply grateful for this amazing life that i get to live that i could cry. for those of you that read the sunday ny times magazine section yesterday, we are the fortunate ones…

ok – back to food…

presenting… a summer dinner. grilled corn with flaky maldon salt and a squeeze of lime. grilled tomatoes with thyme and a farro salad with a slightly overcooked poached egg on top. i’ve got just a vague recollection of what was in the farro salad but i’m thinking it was pequillo peppers and goat cheese – and something else but remembering is difficult…

best beans ever. rancho gordo cannellini’s with grape tomatoes, basil, thyme, lemon zest and juice, some potlikker, finely minced anchovy, a very good olive oil, salt and pepper. i think that was it but i’ve no idea because i can’t recall a damn thing.

lamb meatballs with a cherry sauce over whole wheat couscous finished with mint leaves. a lot of ingredients went into that sauce until it was nicely balanced and pretty damn impressive tasting. but i’m not sure exactly what i did – because of my memory…

all cary ever really wants for his birthday are two (2) angel food cakes with his grandmother’s ’7 minute boiled icing’. the icing becomes slightly hard on the outside and then yields to a slightly marshmallow like goo on the inside. ruhlman’s angel food cake from his bestseller ‘ratio‘, takes this cake to where it needs to go – from spongy and boring to totally delicious. in my opinion it’s all in the weighing of the flour and then using both lemon juice and vanilla. for your viewing pleasure i give you 4 pictures as they were all so awful i just couldn’t choose… this is the whitest cake in america and despite the absence of any fats and the overabundance of sugar, somehow it just works.

my icing technique is legendary. obviously.

moving on…

i phone pics before i bought the 3Gs. but this is the wonderful donnie madia pictured at his flagship restaurant blackbird. for my money, he and eduard seitan are the best restaurateurs in chicago with blackbird, avec, the publican and the newest addition, a tacqueria opening very soon. donnie’s attention to every detail is second to none with a modern sensibility that slays me, as i am highly susceptible to such things. with executive chef and partner paul kahan at the helm of the kitchen, it continues to be a recipe for greatness. we were in chicago for only 4 nights and ate at avec, then publican and then blackbird – finishing up with an anniversary dinner at tru, a gift from my mother. and for a whopping $425 that included only one glass of wine, it paled in comparison by such a long shot that i can’t even begin to explain the differences in the food except to say that in the end, blackbird kicked tru’s ass – big time. tru is supremely elegant and the room is lovely. it’s quiet and serious and the servers are ON IT. but dinner at blackbird was once again phenomenal. oh AND best negroni ever – hands down.

so, a few things… and please again – forgive the poor photo quality.

salad of endives with crispy potatoes, basil, dijon, pancetta and poached egg = sheer perfection. not kidding. this salad was incredible in every way.

chilled cuttlefish noodles with green garlic, red onion jam, trout caviar, nasturtiums and buttermilk = amazingness. i loved it.

wood-grilled california sturgeon with english peas, braised peanuts, crispy bacon and bourbon caramel = seriously impressive.

cary had the organic pork belly and crispy sweet shrimp with chinese broccoli, preserved green tomato and black pepper. he started with the pistachio gazpacho with ahi, watermelon confit, sea beans and cocoa. both were smashing.

this was my idea. sorry.

desserts were wonderful. donnie brought us three and each one was greatness. ricotta fritters with compari, rhubarb and pine nut ice cream, pistachio panna cotta with a raspberry consommé and brown butter ice cream and a torn black sesame cake with pineapple that looked a little something like this that was  – out. of. this. world…

avec, a bit more down to earth, is my favorite restaurant in all the land. and at the publican, albeit a bit on the loud side, we had an abundance of seriously excellent food. beer, oysters, fish and pork. just splendid.

chicago is such an extraordinary food town… thank you donnie.

south west of chicago. mies van der rohe’s masterpiece – the farnsworth house. i wept in its presence. it is genius if not impractical.

no tinkering with picassa was going to help this photo taken through the door of my oven. it was shredded zucchini and yellow squash with minced garlic, chiles and ricotta. i stole the idea from city house restaurant here in nashville. their’s was far better and i’m going to work on this because it was frustrating that i couldn’t replicate it. i need to call chef tandy wilson and ask for help. plus my chiles were so strong that they almost hurt. so, fail, although not in an epic way…

the project – buy 20 lbs of balaton cherries from earthy.com and use 10 to make some cherry bourbon hooch. i’ll get back to you in 6 weeks on how it turns out and if you’re on the short list, it’s what’s for christmas, so no surprises here. the other 10 lbs. became a salted cherry vanilla bean balsamic compote.

oh, and jack’s arm after blackberry picking. the things friends do for friends…

poached egg sitting on a caesar salad with bottarga…

grilled fresh mozzarella with crisped speck and basil…

and for the foundation of this fine dinner, may i introduce to you the 3 seeded bohemian loaf – courtesy of twin fork farms artisan bread.

it’s a dense – but not too dense, chewy slice of bread made from: whole wheat flour, unbleached flour, natural sourdough leaven, sunflower, sesame and flax seeds and salt. all the bread undergoes a long fermentation process which supposedly has a list of advantages, none of which i fully understand, but all sound positively healthful. i had read that for awhile these beautiful orbs were baked in a little beehive oven in david tannen’s backyard, just four at a time but that a bigger oven has since been built, and he’s now churning out about 300 loaves a day. i’m usually not much of a sourdough fan, but this is wonderful bread and i always try and keep a loaf in my freezer.

we’d planned on dinner out last night but the heat has set in to the tune of intolerable. high 90′s + the heat index = over 100 degrees. and really, i’m just not an extreme weather kinda gal. so with a house full of odds and ends and little need for much in the way of imagination, this was dinner. a caesar – of sorts, along with a – kind of, grilled ham and cheese…

it always amazes me what you can come up with just by poking around…

and they’re completely unrelated. but i thought i’d give you two for the price of one. because i believe that you deserve two – if only because i am the slacker of all food bloggers and have miserably fallen down on my posting. and because neither dish photographed all that well. and perhaps mostly because time somehow disappears and i’ve no idea where it goes…

today is a completely lovely day in middle tennessee and well, i sold my car by accident and the new one’s not here yet (or even close) so i am housebound with the ‘amazing growing puppy’ and two pissed off cats. meaning, i need to write, if only as a diversion to my current state of affairs. and ummm, if any one wants to come to my house and take me shopping, that would be super.

so anyway, these are for you and really, they were both excellent.

below we have my adaptation of a gordon ramsey recipe from his book ‘healthy appetite’ which i dearly love due to the fact that the recipes are interesting AND light. so even if his own personal goose is getting cooked right now, i’m still a fan. he is without a doubt a great chef. but gordon? perhaps you shoulda killed ‘em with some kindness afterall, as your karma might be messing with you…

regardless, the scallops were wonderful. peas and lima beans (both frozen) with a lot of mint and a hint of butter, the perfect bed to rest 3 scallops upon, seared with fresh thyme. gordon called for fava beans, not lima’s – and fresh shelled peas. but i don’t have to fear ‘the ramsey’ getting all up in my face, so the executive bean decision was – lima.

fyi – the scallops were NOT burned they were just deeply colored rendering them unattractive yet delicious

and this is a staple around here. greens (turnip this time although usually lacinato kale) and beans (rancho gordo – cannellini’s) with a dose of good red wine vinegar and olive oil, accompanied by copious amounts of rosemary and garlic – topped with a poached egg. and this is really just very, very damn good.

fyi – this totally tasted so much better than it looks here…

lately my food has been simple. even more so than usual. we’re eating things like whole wheat pasta with my own tomato sauce. the current blend is made with heirlooms grown in canadian hot houses, thrown in a blender and then added to a saute of olive oil with garlic, an anchovy, capers and red chile flakes with just a touch of sugar for balance and a few black kalamata olives. 5 big shrimp thrown on top work quite nicely. and then i have most certainly become a vegetable roasting fool. the last batch was portabella’s with eggplant, fennel and red bell peppers – served up with a grilled bison steak. so this is what i’ve eaten lately. not terribly exciting. but really good and wholesome. there is no cheese to speak of, no cream, minimal butter or (sob) bacon, no real desserts – and portions are definitely on the smaller side. yet somehow i am surviving. and i feel better already.

and THEN there are my guilty pleasures because i am ONLY HUMAN and i thought i would tell you what fills in the blanks these days:

(in no particular order)

• laughing cow low fat cheese wedges – 35 processed calories = a hunk of creamy spreadable cheese
• acai juice – 1/2 cup per day. which tastes almost like someone got funky chocolate on my funky raspberries
• diet dr. pepper – one a day. my fave besides dr. browns diet cream soda
• very lightly buttered toast with marmite and a cup of tea – i love this…
• sparsely spread peanut butter with june taylor’s blood orange marmalade
• amy’s frozen dinners – especially their ‘veggie loaf’ and ‘rice macaroni and cheese’ and well, i’ve been eating these for a long time…
• imagine’s boxed soups – butternut squash and creamy tomato (not proud)
• very little pieces of good dark chocolate with an espresso

for the record, my 1000 calories a day is looking much more like 1150. when i can stay at 1000 i am pleased with myself – but yes, it’s a tough number to adhere to. i’m on week 4 and i’m down about 6 lbs. i won’t lose much more than 1.5 a week (age and lack of exercise) but as long as i stay the course, i’ll be fine before too long. it’s still about 4 more solid months of me being ON IT. then i can loosen up a bit.

(i keep eyeing my spring clothes tucked away in the corner of my closet. one very pretty little pale overpriced grey dress in particular…)

i realize the name of this dish probably sounds a bit random and that the picture is not helping. but let me explain…

this past week there have been 2 cooking classes held in my home with 16 students in total. the topic was handmade pasta and well, it really was a lot of fun. we made 3 dishes – a sweet potato tortellini, batali’s fettuccine capricciose and the roman classic, amatraciana with an extruded bucatini.

next month we’re holding a bruschetta and biscotti class. we’ll make a few wonderful bruschettas, we’ll drink some chianti and we’ll bake and bake, everyone going home with a big bunch of cookies for the holidays. be there.

anyway, we had leftovers of the tortellini filling, so last night i invited a friend over with no real thoughts on what i might make for dinner, but somewhere between washing my face and putting on my fuzzy lined merrell’s, it came to me in a flash… i had somehow once again channeled my inner ‘gabrielle hamilton’ and came up with this dish.

i realize it doesn’t look like much. thank god for parsley. but here’s exactly what’s going on. ok. ready? the tortellini filling contained mashed sweet potatoes, egg, parmigiano, nutmeg, parsley and finely diced prosciutto. i formed it into 2 patties and rolled them in panko crumbs. i had bought a couple of king oyster mushrooms to use in my fettuccine dish, but the second night of class used only the regular oyster mushrooms. so i had this beauty sitting in my fridge. phallic? perhaps… i sliced the mushroom into long rectangular strips and grilled them until crisp. my friend had recently been to seattle and stopped into salumi, batali’s dad’s charcuterie shop and brought over some guanciale. we sliced 4 pieces thinly and grilled them as well.

 
think 8 inches long at the very least…. (image swiped from wiki)

so, king oyster mushrooms. who knew? i’m now totally in love with this cultivated funghi. i saw them at the asian market and had to check them out. they only run about $5 a lb and are fleshy, dense and meaty – almost like abalone in texture. just slice them in long vertical strips and they grill up nice and crispy on the edges. huge surprise. which only goes to prove that i need to get out more…

so class, to review:

• pan fried sweet potato cakes filled with prosciutto and parmigiano
• king oyster mushrooms sliced and grilled
• guanciale sliced and grilled
• with a poached egg on top
• a drizzle of balsamic syrup
• and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

remarkable.

this post is dedicated to these 3 bloggers who inspire me to try and be a better cook: jennifer from last night’s dinner. peter from cookblog. and heather from gild the (voodoo)lily.

another egg.  and it could happen again.  eggs are reason #1 as to why i could never ever consider being vegan.  of course i have countless reasons, but let’s call this the first.  and mozzarella and ricotta and parmigiano could be 2, 3 and 4.  root beer floats are 5.  and well, that’s enough for now.  oh and really good cake, as in BUTTER.  ok, so maybe that’s #2. 

the other morning i had been reading somewhere about huevos rancheros.  i’m not sure how that managed to spark this dish, but it did.  i used pita instead of tortillas, and i didn’t feel like running to the store for feta or goat cheese… i just used what i had.  which as you all know, is a very good thing to do.

the lentils had been in my freezer since the early spring porkbelly chronicles .  these were the wonderful puy lentils from france and they’d already been cooked with salt and onions – nothing more.  when they defrosted i hit them with fresh orange zest, cayenne, pimenton and a ton of minced garlic, parsley and chives.  then i put it on the stove to just warm through.

i had an interesting cucumber – big and tan in color and sweet and crunchy.  it had been picked up from the farmers market last weekend.  no idea what exactly it was except to say that it was damn good.  so that sliced with grape tomatoes, roasted red pepper and radish – drizzled with a very good olive oil and my favorite guerande salt.

dinner…

i’ve been seeing this dish around.  and then i spotted it on ruhlman’s blog .  and that was pretty much it for me.  call it a defining moment - but i’d already been tempted, and now this pasta had to happen in my kitchen – and soon. 

i immediately began mentally preping the raviolo’s by going through the ‘mise’ in my mind.  first came the cheese situation.  because if i was going to make these beauties, i was going to have to use sheep’s milk ricotta, with a much more compelling flavor than the sweeter and widely available cows milk version.  and it’s hard enough to procure this ricotta in a major metropolis – but in middle tn?  fuhgeddaboudit.  and believe me when i tell you that i gave it all i had.  n/a.

so as i am wont to do, i clicked my way to ricotta heaven by simply relinquishing my amex # – yet again – for a pricey foodstuff.  but i’ve got to tell you that tony at pastacheese.com came through for me.  i love this guy.  he’s like the italian uncle you always wanted.  sooooo nice.  sooooo willing to do whatever it took, working with my schedule, packing it extra cold, calling me back after checking with his supplier.  all that for 3 measley pounds of ricotta.  it’s flown in from italy, and then it flies out, right to your doorstep – still as fresh as if you were sitting in sardinia sipping a limoncino waiting for your raviolo to arrive.  and yes, shipping kills.  but damn if it wasn’t worth the airfare…

final talley?  $60.  and i’d do it again. 

so, on a martha re-run (that freakin’ woman gets on my very last nerve – but has undeniably the best guests) odette fada, chef at san domenico’s, whipped up a more wintry version of her raviolo’s using spinach, ricotta, parmigiano and nutmeg, and about $500 (not kidding) of white truffles from alba.  so be sure to run and get yourself some this autumn.  mmmk?  oh, and while you’re getting that, get this – martha actually had the audacity to say "we save up for this one dinner…" and i literally felt myself seethe.  it was a very unzen moment for me and i’m not proud…  BUT REALLY MARTHA… please spare us the bullcrap as we all know you can shit white truffles from alba, ok?

i stuck with ruhlman all the way.  i wasn’t able to get any espellete on the quick, but next time i’ll have it in my pantry (it’s on order).  i made do with a sprinkle of cayenne, some organic valencia orange zest, finely minced shallot and chive and salt.  my eggs were bought the day before from the amish at the nashville farmers’ market and the pasta was made with ap flour, whole eggs and a touch of water.  we rolled it thin and here’s how it all came together…

after about 2 minutes at a slow but steady boil in salted water, the raviolo’s are carefully removed and browned butter is spooned over the top.

if ever there were a pasta that i look forward to perfecting, this would be it.  the first try came out nicely but i’m going to try and get some fluted edged round dough cutters and perhaps let the raviolo’s cook an extra minute next time – just to tighten up the yolk a bit more.  but don’t get me wrong, it’s a damn sexy dish and everyone was collectively swooning. but this one is absolutely worth getting as close to perfect as you can.

i feel that the ruhlman version is the much better warmer weather option, the orange zest really brightening everything right up.  but this winter i’ll definitely try odette’s, with spinach and nutmeg, although depending on the price of truffles, i may be relegated to using just the truffled butter.

and i can totally live with that.

i think…

i swear this dish started out as a vegetarian dinner. and it was. twice. until it just couldn’t be anymore. and really, there is so very little meat on this plate. just 2 measly strips of: "MY-VERY-OWN-UNFREAKINREAL-CURED-BACONY-STUFF". i mean, who the hell knew you could do this? next thing you know i’ll be baking my own baguettes… not. but hey, first let’s talk about the beans. which are not just any beans. they are rancho gordo’s scarlet runner beans. and i love them. truly and with feeling. here’s a fact: if you’re buying the beans on the shelf of your supermarket, just know that they can easily be up to 12 years old. and even if you think that those beans are "just fine", it’s only because you’ve never tried rancho gordo’s beans. and when you do, i believe you’ll be a convert, just like me. so there ya go.

when i looked on RG’s site, they say that they like to make the scarlet runners with wild mushrooms. so i got to thinking… and after a good long soak, i added the beans to a pot of onions that had been caramelizing for about 30 minutes. then i added some reconstituted wild mushrooms – a good mix of porcini, morel, shitake, oyster and portabella, – along with its (strained) soaking water. towards the end of the cooking i added a large amount of chopped mustard greens, fresh thyme and some salt and pepper – and let the dish simmer until i felt the beans were done. for planning purposes, please note that these beans are of the extra large variety and take a long time to cook – 3 hours or so.

so after eating the hell out of this damn fine pot-o-beans, i began to yearn for something more. something well, meaty. so i channeled my inner gabrielle hamilton from the AMAZING – but AMAZING – restaurant ‘prune’ in nyc’s east village, and i wacked a coupla slices off my beautifully cured belly, trimmed the skin off the edges and fried those porky strips right up. and then, because it’s what i do – i poached an egg.

and you think that’s it, right? like what more could i possibly do to improve on this, right? well the next night when i gave cary the last of it for dinner, i added some leftover polenta as the bottom layer. and i set that bowl down before him and said "of all the things i’ve made in quite some time – i am the proudest of this dish". i really think that gabrielle would be just fine offering this on the ‘prune’ menu. no really. i do.

delusional? perhaps.

and the parsley sprig? that’s so totally for you…

no, no – not the cola. we’re talkin’ rob cox. a professional cook here in town. i love this guy for too many reasons to list. but if i were to make a list, on there somewhere would be both his exuberant passion for food, and that he’s a fun friend to have around because we get to talk about tongues and testicles – that is, of the lamb and pig persuasion. yes, he’s a huge fergus henderson fan. fergus of the restaurant ‘st. john‘ – the very restaurant that my tony bourdain and my mario batali go on and on about. i once read somewhere that if you want to get a chef all hot and bothered, just whisper pork belly in his ear. although this was not my MO with rob – cause as great as he is i’m like really old compared to him and not single (hi baby!) – our conversation led us to the belly of the pig and i found myself ordering an 8 lb skin-on slab from niman ranch and well, when rob stopped in over the weekend, said belly was 24 hours into it’s 72 hour cure.

(rob in action and yes, that IS a wind up mario batali doll)

so rob comes into my kitchen with about 4 books (one of which was an imported and rare ‘marco pierre white’ book just for me!) under one arm and a big red metal tool box in his other hand. the guy’s tool box is filled with knives, whisks, truffle shavers – you name it. i mean is that cool or what? by cool i mean sexy, but let’s just call it cool and then call it a day. but rob came for a purpose and that was to cook. and so while opening my pantry and fridge, perusing the possibilities, i proudly showed him my belly. (this post has way too much excellent potential for sexual innuendo)… so first thing rob does is he takes the pork and cuts off about a 2 inch strip from one side. then that goes back in the refrigerator to continue doing what a pork belly does when it’s been heavily coated with some serious spices, salt and sugar (much more on all that coming up next week). and then he was off and running and i was just trying to pretend that i could be of some earthly assistance. what you see at the top is an oven roasted pork belly square with an apple walnut salad and puree of bread and arugula. the pretty purple stuff is some of my leftover blueberry gastrique that i kept forcing rob to use. (thanks rob.) the walnut apple salad was made using orange blossom water, shallots, garlic, verjus and blis maple syrup. we finished the dish off with a really wonderful smoked salt that i crushed using the side of my little ‘point and shoot’ cannon. i am so awesome.

we actually did the pork three ways, two for this dish. one in the oven and the second on my super-duper-turbo-kick-ass-infrared-ceramic plated grill. the grilled piece tasted better, but the meat didn’t look as attractive, so in the name of visuals it got second billing below – but it had the better skin crunch going on by far. i just wanted to impress you right off with the better pic.

next up rob decided to do oeufs en cocotte – or baked eggs. so he took some of the raw pork belly and diced it into lardons and then we placed that in a pan and began to render out the fat, adding water to aid the process. a ramekin was coated with some black truffle butter and then the lardons went in next followed by 2 carefully cracked eggs and a generous grating of parmigiano, being it was the only cheese in the house – and breadcrumbs. the ramekin went into a water bath and as we were about to place it in the oven…

we realized what was missing!

more truffle butter! what could we have been thinking? more butter + more truffles = more better!

eggs how i love thee. but then to surround you by truffled up butter, pork belly and parmigiano, i am just in awe…

i will say that a little pork belly goes a very long way. kind of like foie gras. but damn if it isn’t just an amazing cut of meat.

pork belly… it’s not just what’s for bacon anymore…

not a typo

i came across a food blog a couple of months ago at the beginning of my bottarga quest called ‘fx cuisine‘.  i must tell you that - people, this here is no ordinary food blog.  this guy is both serious and fearless when it comes to cooking and a lot of the times this author’s food involves such a complicated route from here to yonder that honestly it’s more mileage then i’m willing to go for just about any dish out there.  but when ‘serious eats’ featured a daily photo of his 300 minute egg, it jarred my memory and i recalled seeing it on his site awhile back.  and if nothing else, the lure of that accompanying sauce made from anchovies, garlic, lemon, fresh ground pepper and olive oil wafted back into the forefront of my mind, and i quickly set the oven to 210 f. 

i had everything i needed.  and the thought of a nutty brown slow roasted egg topped with garlicky anchovy goodness was going to be worth the 60 minutes x 5 hours = 300 minute wait.  i so very heart eggs. 

the actual recipe, ‘sephardic oven-roasted eggs’, along with the anchovy vinaigrette is taken from paula wolfert’s book, ‘the slow mediterranean kitchen: recipes for the passionate cook‘.

as a kid, every year at passover there’d be some kind of brown/burnt egg on the sedar plate – the beitzah – which now as an adult i rediscover symbolizes the perpetual cycle of life, from birth to death to re-birth and/or a symbol of mourning over the destruction of the temple and some kind of festival sacrifice.  all that to say that being the non-observant jew that i am, i barely understand it any more today than i did when i was 12 and reciting ‘the four questions’.  i just knew i’d seen a roasted egg somewhere.  during a sedar it’s for show only – not to be consumed.  i prefer this version…

friends were coming by for an informal gathering and everyone was bringing a little something.  so besides a few other things pulled from the pantry like some salsa tartufata spread on flatbread, some black sage honey for angela’s beautiful hunk of parmegiano just off the plane direct from fairway in nyc, these roasted eggs were to be my offering.  oh – these and some smoked mullet roe that i had soaked and dehydrated a few weeks before, sliced and added to the fresh fettucine with creme fraiche and white truffle oil that i regularly rave about.  that and a couple of bottles of a lovely louis tête beaujolais-villages.  oh and a sicilian ricotta cheesecake that i baked that day.  plus the rest of the chocolate sorbet…

no time for artistic presentation when your friends show up at the door.

but today we had the rest of the roasted eggs with a strip of anchovy across the top and a little dollop of stokes blushed tomato mayonnaise.

my kind of lunch.

all that in 30 minutes including tons of bad commercials.  that wolfgang sure can whip up an egg into delectable submission – and quickly.

so i take all 4 concepts – well, ok, maybe just 3, and combine them.  kinda sorta.

(oh – and here’s the really happy part – my adorable boyfriend (1) helps chop, (2) shoots a few pics for the ol’ blog, (3) eats whatever’s going willingly and happily – and then (4) cleans up.  AWESOME, no?  well damn, it took 2 marriages, numerous other relationships and 45 years to find him…)

the next point i’d like to make here if in fact i’ve already made a prior one is that tomorrow morning i must go and pick up my csa share.  both scary and potentially wonderful.  you see, my kitchen was unusable for about 2 days this past week so i am way behind on produce  consumption.  so i had to get chopping – and use eggs. because after all, wolfgang inspired me.  tivo allows me to find inspiration at my whim.  what a concept.  what a country.

so here’s what i did.  i chopped green and red bell peppers along with some summer squash and threw it in the pan with some olive oil and salt and pepper.  very pretty.

then i put 6 eggs in a bowl along with a tablespoon of some melted butter and whipped that up.  but here’s the thing – be ULTRA sure that you buy the very overpriced eggs that have the super-cool box because then you will feel oh so very superior with the knowledge that you have bought the right eggs from happy chickens that are free to be themselves and farmer bob (no shit) assures you on a little foldout inside the cartoon that it’s all good.  and i’d so believe him had i not read ‘the omnivores dilemma’ by michael pollan.  ah well.  i shelled out anyway.  i’m probably putting farmer bob’s kids through college or paying for his mid-life crisis red porsche.  whatever.

ok so then i chopped some scallions and then i chopped 3 kinds of tomatoes and then i pitted and chopped 2 kinds of olives.  cary grated some hard cheddar style raw goat cheese that i kinda like and sometimes have in the house.

i also had arugula in the house because i adore arugula.  arugula is right up there in my favorite ‘greens’ category.  i would vote for arugula if it were running for something.  go arugula.  so i used that as my salad base and then layered my cheesy softly scrambled slightly buttery eggs on top of that, placing the sauteed veggies on top of that and then the tomatoes, scallions and olives on top of each other. 

how pretty is that?