From The Best of Taste: The Finest Food of Fifteen Nations (1957), The SACLANT-NATO Cookbook Committee
I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.
Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.
From 500 Snacks: Bright Ideas for Entertaining (1941), Culinary Arts Institute
I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.
Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.
I've always been thankful that I'm not allergic to anything. I breathe a sigh of relief every time I get to say "not that I know of" when the doctor asks if I'm allergic to anything. At the same time, I've always felt really bad for people who do suffer from food allergies. Lactose intolerance? You poor thing! What? You can't eat wheat/bread? I just don't think I could make it.
I realize that if you are one of the people who can't eat certain foods you get used to it and take it in stride. And of course, food labels are enormously useful in helping people avoid those dangerous foods. Even though there are more, manufacturers are required to list the top eight, which are responsible for 90% of allergic reactions. I'm sure all of these look familiar to any careful label reader!
1. wheat 2. soy 3. peanuts 4. tree nuts (almonds, walnuts, etc) 5, milk 6. eggs 7. fish 8. shellfish
For a period of time, long before I was born, my dad was a short-order cook. He worked the breakfast grill, cooking up mountains of pancakes, rivers of bacon strips and more eggs than is possible to count. Because of this experience, he is a master at the art of cooking eggs, be it soft boiled, hard boiled, poached, sunny side up or even over easy, hold the wiggle (a term that describes that perfect point at which the whites are just cooked and the yolks are still beautifully runny).
I credit his egg mastery to my own egg-cooking ease. It never occurred to me to feel anxiety around the preparation of poached eggs, I've been making them on my own since I was 9 years old. I didn't realize that some people held to strict hard boiled egg routines, I just put them in the pot and go. They always turn out perfectly fine.
For those of you who need a bit more guidance than, "just boil until it feels right," Cooking for Engineers has put together a thorough soft boiled egg chart and tutorial for you. Michael Chu cooked up a whole bunch of eggs, removing them from the pan at 1 minute intervals, so you can see how a two minute egg looks different from a seven minute egg. Pick your egg preference, set your timers and enjoy!
Bit by slow bit, I have been collecting my preferred egg preparation techniques. The fried egg was easy -- I grew up on my mom's over easy/medium eggs -- liquidy yolks with a nice ring of brown crispies around the edge of the whites. For poached, I use the ladle technique. For hard-boiled, I bring the eggs to a boil, then let them sit with the heat off for a while. But soft-boiled -- I've yet to find a technique I'm perfectly happy with.
Perhaps the Soft Boiled Eggs by Cooking for Engineers will be key. They bring the water to a boil, add the eggs, cover, and boiling for 5 minutes without lowering the heat. Then they're placed in an ice water bath. Why? It lowers the temperature of the egg whites, which helps keep the yolk from cooking, and two -- it causes a little bit of shrinkage.
See, this recipe ends with peeled soft-boiled eggs. I have to say -- the thought never occured to me, but now I'm scheming up eggs twists -- perhaps a soft-boiled egg cracked open into a small, hollowed-out and toasted roll?
What's your favorite soft-boiled egg technique, and do you eat them in or out of the shell?
Last Thursday, I came home from work with absolutely no plan as to what to make for dinner. Most nights I have at least a semblance of a plan, whether it be 1). Eat leftovers from weekend cooking, 2). Turkey burgers and salad or 3). Gather the boyfriend and go out. There weren't any leftovers, nothing was defrosted and Scott was working late, which ruled out option three.
Taking stock of the fridge, my eyes hit upon the teeny farmers market eggs I had picked up the previous weekend. Egg salad it would be, made with finely chopped green pepper (I was out of celery and needed something for crunch), grated onion and a tiny bit of fresh dill. After the eggs finished cooking and were cooling down, my eyes found the pastry blender resting in the dish drainer. Normally I'll just chop the heck out of the peeled eggs on my cutting board and then scrape them into the bowl, but this time inspiration (and a bit of laziness) led me to use the pastry blender instead. It worked perfectly, created less mess and gave a nice variable texture to the eggs.
I ate some of the salad open-face on a piece of toasted whole grain bread, sliced tomatoes standing in for the second piece bread. It was a quick dinner that was fresh tasting and left the kitchen cool and not too messed.
Behold the Whatafarm burger, which according to alanbeam.net, via about.blank is "a burger ordered from the Whataburger chain and includes chicken, egg, cheese and bacon. 2 parts cow, 2 parts chicken, 1 part pig."
I'm all for the orgiastic multi-species chow down, what with my penchant for Kentucky burgoo (2 formats of cow -- old and young, lamb, pig, and chicken) and applaud the orderers for their gastronomic gumption. If I were being all harrumphy about it, I could note that the menu offers pig in sausage form and a fish filet as well and they opted for neither, but hey - Michelangelo didn't knock out the Sistine Chapel on his first jaunt up the scaffolding.
We salute you with all hooves, claws and trotters up!
The floods in the Mid-West are causing a nationwide increase in food prices across the board. Corn and soy prices are increasing dramatically which means other foods that depend upon them are increasing as well. Expect to see many grocery items like meats, cheese, eggs, milk, oil, etc. increase in price.
I spent summers as a child in the corn fields of Iowa, many of which have become lakes, with the gently hills small islands. Now many of these farmers are calling it quits, selling off the farms and getting out of the business. Animals are being sold off, which means a short term meat glut, but a long term shortage. Don't expect prices to go down from the quick influx of meat, because the long term shortage is so visible that prices have to start reacting now.
This is going to have such long term effects that you can expect your Holiday turkeys and hams to cost quite a bit more than last year, and possibly even more the year after that.
One more great eggs-ample of food art! This piece was created by artist Henk Hofstra, and the Wooster Collective reported back in May about the project that's located in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
Each egg is about 100 feet wide, and they were spread out in one of the largest squares in Leeuwarden, called Zaailand, where they'll be walked on and photographed for six months.
Diana Eid of Inventor Spot said that this art project was just made for Google Earth, which tickled me to no end. I wouldn't have thought that, but I think it's great that someone did. New and creative ways to view food and art are always welcome in my book.
Are you concerned about your kids eating their eggs? The Egg Robot is here to help.
The Egg Robot comes with the robot suit and the spoon, but you have to provide the eggs, of course. It's a newish toy that claims to make eating eggs more fun for your kids, thus they will now eat their eggs (it's really nothing more than a fancied up egg cup). That's assuming you have trouble getting your kids to eat eggs, otherwise it's just a novelty item that'd hang around and clutter up your house.
I know I didn't like eggs when I was a kid, except hard cooked eggs. There wasn't very much my mom could do to convince me otherwise, but I don't remember that being such a big concern for her. Maybe you could put other foodstuff in the robot to make your child want to eat whatever it is, something a little more important, like vegetables. Do you think this is a good idea?
We're usually talking about foods we love here on Slashfood, but occasionally we talk about foods we hate. This post had so many comments about yucky foods that freak out people. So here is my most hated food combination. Eggs and ketchup. I find the smell personally disgusting, especially with scrambled eggs. My mom used to use ketchup on her eggs when I was a kid and one day I tried it. Well I have to say it was loathe at first taste, and smell. It has this weird sickly sweet, odor reminiscent of vomit and corpses. Well, maybe not really, but it feels that way to me. I wonder if somewhere way back when I was young, I was ill and my mother served these to me and then I barfed. I can't think why this smell would be so powerful to me.
A few years ago I ordered one of my, several times a year, road trip treats. I was on my way to several days of food and wine events and needed some quick calories to sustain me on the drive. This is usually the only time I do this, and I requested a breakfast sandwich of ham, bacon, eggs, and cheese on a toasted, buttered, kaiser roll at my local deli. I got to my car and as soon as I opened the bag that odor wafted out. The pong (as my English mom would say) made my nose hairs curl. KETCHUP WAS ON MY EGGS. Holding the bag at arms length, wishing that my arms were even longer, I proceeded back to the deli and dropped the offending substance onto the counter and requested an edible sandwich.
Not long after this I was starting on a vacation road trip with fellow blogger and good buddy Joe DiStefano, heading up to Down East Maine and New Brunswick, Canada for a week or two of camping. We ordered breakfast sandwiches at the same deli and headed out to the car. Before we even got in I smelled that rank excrescence assaulting my sense of smell and sensibility. JOE HAD ORDERED KETCHUP ON HIS EGGS. I made him stand outside my car to eat his slop why I ate my tasty sandwich inside, with the windows rolled up. Lucky for him it was a gorgeous summer day.
So what about you folks? Who else hates the smell/taste of ketchup on eggs? Anyone?
A satiny, butter-yellow Hollandaise is a beautiful thing, whether spooned over poached eggs or dribbled on lightly cooked asparagus. A 'broken' hollandaise, however, is a nasty, grainy, wet mess.
Younger readers might not remember that ad slogan, but the theme has been rattling around in my brain since I found out that today is National Egg Day. Treat yourself to a nice Eggs Benedict (which I bet is something you don't eat that often) or maybe visit IowaEgg.org for some great recipes ranging from omelets (I have my eye on this Apple, Cheddar, and Bacon one) to desserts. I used to have Fried Egg Sandwiches once a week when I was a kid. Topped with ketchup! Mmmmmmmmmm. I never put mustard on it like that recipe has, but that actually sounds pretty cool.
And don't forget that we have an egg category too.
A jar of honey can become a sticky mess. Next time you're adding honey to another dish or a mug of tea, use a honey dipper to prevent a thick gooey layer from spreading.
Are you concerned about your kids eating their eggs? The Egg Robot is here to help. 
Chocolate-stuffed bananas on the grill
Tyler Florence welcomes new daughter
Beware kids' menus!
