Getting Egged!

I am sitting outside enjoying the cool Floridan morning as I am happily blogging again. I recently returned to teaching after a 10-year hiatus.  I love it!  I was reminded of how time-consuming it is.  With my full-time job, my dissertation work, and teaching, there was almost no time for me to blog.   I have been mulling several posts for this food blog.  I look forward to writing quite a bit. 

Eggs.  How eggciting!  Eggs are eggtraordinarily and eggquisitely versatile.  Enough with puns. :)

I seriously love eggs.  Who does not?  Eggs are high in protein and can be cooked in many different forms.  I like them hard-boiled, medium-boiled, soft-boiled.  Poached… Baked… Scrambled… Fried…

I have baked eggs in avocados, tomatoes, and baguettes created with holes for a fun breakfast presentation. 

                         

I love frittatas.  I think dinner leftovers make amazing frittatas.  I use up leftover potatoes and vegetables and mix them in with eggs, some cheese, and herbs then pop in the oven to bake.  This works quite well with kids who refuse to eat their vegetables at dinner.  I have found that they are more willing to eat the vegetables INSIDE a frittata.  Give it a try! 

I make egg souffles.  I tried one with hash-brown crusts which came out very well.  For single-serving souffle, I use a ramekin.  I love to layer the bottom with spinach and then add eggs to the top before topping with caramelized onions and maybe a dollop of pesto.  

I discovered my love of chilaquiles on my trip to southern Mexico.  It is a dish of scrambled eggs cooked with tortilla chips, queso fresco, and either green or red salsa.  I enjoy it with my homemade salsa verde.  In southern Mexico, they do add grilled chicken strips as well. 

Ironically, it took me YEARS to learn how to properly poach and fry eggs.  Phew.  Take a look at my artistic self…. If I am to create something in an art class, I am abstract.  I don’t like to follow instructions to the T.  I love to color outside the lines.  Sometime I create something without knowing what the outcome would be.  Last year, I took an art workshop for cancer patients and survivors.  I collected the materials and jumped in.  The teacher highly recommended that I figure out the design of my project before jumping in.  I did not listen.  Yes it may mean I face some obstacles as I figure out the next step in the creation.  My project turned out beautifully, by the way.  My ‘abstract’ nature is very much alive in the kitchen.  I often groan when I am excited to try a new recipe and realized that I forgot to read that something needs to be soaked overnight, marinated for a few hours, yada yada.  It was like when I made the ice cream with Danny.  I told him that he had to come back the next day after the mixture has ‘matured.’

A friend in San Diego, Deb took on a challenge to teach me how to fry eggs a few years ago.  I asked how I could make over-easy eggs-- my favorite without destroying the yolk.  It requires patience and precision, something I did not have.  The lesson went well. But I went through many destroyed yolks.  Ah well.  Sometime I am successful, sometime I am not.  I might have to settle on sunnyside up eggs as a quick shortcut.  But there is hope for me still.  Sometime I get lucky with an intact over-easy egg like this one time when I made a Korean beef stirfry with an over-easy egg on the top.  Isn't this beautiful? 

Another friend, Christina, claimed that poaching eggs was easy.  She tried to explain to me how to do it but I did not succeed after several attempts.  My struggle lies with trying to keep the egg stay together in the water.  I lose some egg white along the way.  I finally found the best shortcut in making poached eggs:  http://www.purewow.com/food/poached-eggs-trick.  I can't help but wonder if Christina would end up using this shortcut or will she continue to do it the Julia Child way? 

Shortcuts are not necessarily bad.  The outcome is the same.  It is how you get there that is different.  Writing that just now reminded me of my math teacher who always said there are different ways to get the same answer.  If it means I fail any chance to be admitted to a prestigious culinary school because I use a plastic wrap to poach my egg, so be it.  What matters most to me is the aesthetic presentation to ensure the happiness of my diners' and my palates.  That is far better than serving a plate with an broken egg.