Thursday, November 17, 2011

The elusive egg


It started with the acquisition of a new cookbook. Actually, it started with the acquisition of a very specific cookbook; Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Italy, if you must know, which is filled with beautiful photos of Tuscan hillsides, and ancient buildings, and fresh seafood being hauled into port, and sizzling stews, and homegrown produce, and family and friends beating eggs, and rolling dough, and enjoying one another. The book is so rich in narrative and is such a visual feast that it’s nearly possible to forget that it’s filled with wonderful recipes too. I have spent a good deal of time combing through it, drooling a little, and coveting the dishes and scenes laid out before me. What I enjoy most about the recipes in the book is that they are varied; there are in-depth directions for mixing, shaping by hand, and cooking fresh pasta, tying and properly seasoning a roast, and building flavors in a variety of slow simmered sauces and stocks, and then there are simply pages filled with ingredients and flavor ideas. For instance, Jamie first offers his favorite pizza dough recipe and then lists countless combinations of ingredients with which he likes to top off the perfect pie. It’s therefore a wonderful cookbook for an individual such as myself who has a difficult time resisting the temptation to improvise halfway through the recipe; Jamie has given me a delicious jumping off point, and provided that I follow basic technical instructions, he’s actually inviting me to use some creative license.
So far I’ve made only a few of the recipes in this beautiful book both because I spend too much time pawing through it to actually get any cooking done and because in wonderful, Italian family-style fashion, the majority of the recipes are designed to feed a small army. Yes, I would love to try the Arrosto Misto (assorted roast) recipe – perfectly seasoned chicken, succulent cinnamon-coated duck, squab and quail tossed with orange rind, and rabbit stuffed with a handful of breadcrumbs and two sweet Italian sausages, and all of it cooked together in one big pan with several lemon halves, a bit of pancetta, and smothered with rosemary – but not even my stomach is that big.
There was one recipe in particular that caught my eye – la migliore frittata di gamberetti e prezzemolo (the best shrimp and parsley frittata). Its simple design and flavors immediately spoke to me as the ideal brunch or lunch, and so I set about finding a dining partner with whom I could share this creation, and for whom I am still currently searching. I suppose I can’t really find fault that my invitations have been passed over since, until very recently, I was deathly afraid of the fish taco, so I am relatively understanding of the fact that others might feel squeamish about this proposed seafood, skillet sensation. I would like to point out, of course, that it is in no way weird; that cultures other than the one I am currently standing in consume egg and seafood together as a staple, but my cross-cultural research has still turned up zero interest for a brunch date. Now, the reasonable course of action would probably have been to just make the frittata and eat only part of it, but my heart breaks at the thought of waste, and if others are going to turn up their noses at fresh, fish frittata then I’ll admit that I’m not wild about the idea of cold, day-old seafood frittata, and introducing the matter of a microwave here would entirely add insult to injury. With that being said, I decided I could alter the recipe; I can’t eat a full frittata myself, but I can eat an omelette. So, for several days in a row now, I have prepared the shrimp, carefully collected big, hearty, fresh leaves of parsley, tenderly whipped an egg, and shuffled it all into the pan in preparation for lunch. And what I have actually eaten for lunch every day is some shrimp and very well done scrambled eggs. The omelette, it seems, is simply out of reach.
            Now, the omelette is one of those tricky little dishes that sounds pedestrian, but actually requires skill. The jokes are infinite about the mark of a good chef coming done to seemingly inane cooking talents, and often those talents involve cooking an egg, and cooking it perfectly. My favorite story of egg related bragging rights actually belongs to chef/author Gabrielle Hamilton relating to her sister’s unbelievable faux pas in preparing an omelette for a rather high profile lunch guest:

           "André Soltner is currently a dean at the French Culinary Institute. He’s the guy who judges a cook by his omelette, his roast chicken, his vinaigrette. After that, whatever you want to flambé or shove in a ring mold is up to you, but if you can’t make a French-style, perfectly yellow omelette, you can’t graduate, or something absurd like that. I have heard the legendary tale – exaggerated I am sure – that the final exam, pass or fail – your six hundred hours of cooking school down the [ffffing] drain – is to make the perfect ovoid omelette with tiny curds so finely pored that it resembles a baby’s butt…
Soltner arrived and Melissa, in spite of my warnings, said she wanted to prepare him an omelette, if he wouldn’t mind, and she was wondering if he wouldn’t mind showing her how he makes them. She enlisted the instructor in him. And he was glad to oblige, but asked her to prepare hers first. So she made her omelette the way we do at home, perfectly delicious, dragging the beaten egg in from noon, three, six and nine o’clock in the pan until all the loose egg had run into the pan and set. She let the omelette get a touch of golden color on the exterior. Then she filled the omelette, turned it in half making a half moon, slid in onto a plate, and kept it warm in the oven.
André Soltner picked up one egg and cracked it on the edge of the counter. With two hands, he split the egg open and deposited its contents into a bowl. With each thumb, he reached into each half of the shell and scraped out the remaining albumen that tends to cling to the membrane until he had thoroughly cleaned out the egg.
He said, ‘When I was growing up, this is how my mother got thirteen eggs out of the dozen.’ Then he put the shells in the trash…
He beat the eggs and poured them into the prepared pan and then he agitated the eggs with a fork, constantly, over low heat until the curd was soft and tiny, and when the egg had adequately set, he tapped the pan, with gusto, on the burner to take out any last tiny gasp of air and then – did he flip it in the air, did he set it on fire, did he get out the chemical compounds to make omelette “eggs”? He did not. He grasped the pan in his left hand and tilted it slightly toward the back of the stove. With his right hand, he tapped his left wrist, like a junky searching for a good vein, over and over, causing a little vibration in the pan that pushed the omelette incrementally with every tap up against the lip and then, when cresting, back in over itself until the whole omelette was folding over into thirds, a perfect football shape, absolutely no color on it, just perfectly cooked yellow omelette, and he put the little torpedo onto the plate for lunch. The omelette. As prepared by Soltner with just two hands, a fork, and a sauté pan” (Blood, Bones & Butter, 155).

I can roast a chicken, so I’m halfway there; the omelette, it seems, is another story. I’ve tried four different pans, a variety of sprays and spreads, and a whole host of spatulas. I’ve cracked the egg on the rim of the bowl, on the flat surface on the counter, and I even tried the one-handed-thing, which ended with an eggshell broken into infinitesimal pieces and a lot of raw egg on a lot of stuff. I’ve poured the egg mixture into a hot pan, I’ve poured it into a cold one and warmed the skillet slowly. Regardless of my approach, each time I inevitably reach the point of no return when I am simply forced to scramble the heck out of the egg to at least produce something that looks remotely edible. I’ve researched omelette techniques online, I’ve had Zach talk me through each step over the phone, and still I am eating scrambled eggs, and rather dry ones at that, though now I’m bound and determined to do the eggs justice  whether poached, fried, in an omelette or a frittata. So, I am posting today, two recipes. The first one is the recipe that I would like to make, and though I can’t yet speak to its taste from experience, I have enough faith in the author (don't you? we're talking about the Naked Chef here) to recommend it to you on the off chance that your brunch guests are more daring. The second recipe is for what has become my habitual, though somewhat unintentional, lunch, and which is still a tasty and protein packed afternoon meal idea.


La migliore frittata di gamberetti e prezzemolo
From Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Italy cookbook

Ingredients:
6 large eggs
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
a handful of fresh parsley leaves, finely chopped
zest of one lemon
juice of 1/4 of a lemon
1 heaping tablespoon freshly grated parmesan cheese
6-7 oz. fresh shelled medium shrimp
a good dollop of butter
olive oil
1/2 dried red chili, crumbled

Preheat the oven to 425 F. In a bowl, whisk the eggs with some salt and pepper, then add the parsley, lemon zest and juice, and the cheese. Roughly chop half of the shrimp and leave the rest whole and add all of them to the bowl. In a small nonstick and ovenproof pan, heat the butter with a bit of oil until it begins to foam and then add in the egg mixture. Slowly move a spoon around the eggs for a minute on medium heat and then put the pan right into the oven. Cook for about 4-5 minutes or until slightly golden. Sprinkle the top with chili flakes, and a bit more parsley if desired.

Jamie suggests this dish be paired with a salad and some wine, and insists that the recipe is also brilliant with crab or lobster meat instead of shrimp.



Shrimpy scrambled eggs
From the kitchen misadventures of Jessica Spier

Ingredients:
1 egg
a splash of milk
salt and pepper
a handful of fresh parsley, roughly torn
lemon juice (fresh is best)
some shrimp (enough to satisfy you), cooked, deveined, shelled, and chopped
olive oil for the pan
1 Tbs. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp. chili flakes
salad greens


Heat a bit of olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium/low heat. Lightly beat the egg with the milk, salt and pepper, and some of the parsley and pour it into the pan. Slowly scramble the egg to nearly the desired degree of doneness, toss in the shrimp (if you want to use raw shrimp, simply put them in the pan prior to the egg mixture to ensure they will be cooked through), cook a minute more and remove from heat. Plate scrambled eggs and shrimp over a bed of mixed salad greens, top it off with a touch more olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, the rest of the parsley, the cheese, and a hint more salt and pepper. Eat promptly, think about the frittata you could have had, but still enjoy your delightful lunch.



No comments:

Post a Comment