eggs - Retro Food For Modern Times

09
Oct
2022

Ceviche & Eggs A La Mexicana

categories: 1970's recipes, Eggs, Fish, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Mexico

Hola amigas y amantes de la comida! Did I ever mention that during that very first lockdown of 2020, I tried learning Spanish on Duolingo? That first sentence pretty much reflects the highest level of proficiency I attained. Despite my very limited ability to speak the language, we are leaving the snowbound land of Canada to head south to the sun and sea of Mexico via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. And our first meal is going to be an absolute favourite of mine – Ceviche!

Ceviche contains so many things I love – raw fish, avocado, lemon, tomato, chill and coriander! And it is also so vibrant! I used tuna in my ceviche so there was the gorgeous pink of the tuna, some red tomatoes, the bright green of the coriander, the more more mellow yellow green of the avocado some bright yellow pear tomatoes so it really was very colourful.

I then also made Eggs A La Mexicana from the same chapter and the colour palette was quite similar!

Of course I am not the first person to realise that a lot of Mexican food is yellow, red and green…there are several colour palettes to this effect on Pinterest and elsewhere:

Having said that, the part of my brain that probably spends too much time at work, or thinking about work, thought the colour palette of both dishes was very similar to that of an Excel conditional formatting colour scale! So I may well be the first person to link Mexican food and a spreadsheeting tool!

The Recipes – Ceviche and Eggs a La Mexicana

Both of these were delicious and easy to cook! Which as long-time readers will know was definitely not the case the last time I ventured into the realm of Mexican cooking! Mind you, I’m not saying that these recipes are absolutely authentico but they had me doing a little dance like this all the same!I hope your week has you also doing a little dance and not staring at too many spreadsheets!

29
Aug
2021

Devilled Egg Pie

categories: Devilled Eggs, Eggs

I had a little moment recently of coincidence or prescience depending on what you believe. I was thinking “Better start looking for recipes for Pieathalon – that will be coming up soon”. I found a copy of Mollie Katzen’s recipe for Devilled Egg Pie from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Could there be a more perfect Pieathalon pie? Devilled eggs are such a stalwart of retro cooking and I’m pretty sure that no one has yet cooked from this classic of vegetarian cooking! Then I realised that the recipe calls for a mashed potato pie crust. Which I had not copied. Without a recipe for the crust, I could not send it to someone else to cook. But I could cook it myself and invent my own mashed potato crust!

And it’s only proper after all. Do you think any of those athletes you just watched in the Olympics came in cold? No way! They practiced! So, consider this one of my warm-up heats to get myself rmatch ready for Pieathalon!

The Mashed Potato Crust

Let’s start with that mashed potato pie crust I needed to invent. I had some leftover mashed potato. Which I pressed into the bottom and sides of some little pie dishes. Oh yes, I decided to make individual devilled egg pies.

I then brushed these with a little bit of melted butter and popped them into the oven at 180C until the edges started to go brown and crispy, around 15 minutes.

Crust done!

Next up was the sauce that drew me to this recipe in the first place. It is a white sauce with horseradish, mustard and dill. I know there is no Scandinavian blood in my veins but these flavours absolutely sing to me. I used the very last of the horseradish I had harvested from our garden. The mustard and dill came from the supermarket and greengrocer respectively. I spooned the sauce into the bottom of the pie dishes:

I added some halved hard-boiled eggs.

And I spooned some more of the sauce over the top and popped the pies into the oven until the sauce was golden brown on top!

Devilled Egg Pie – The Recipe

Mollie Katzen gives two versions of this dish. I made the hard-boiled egg version but I am also keen to try the fresh egg version. I also think she missed a bit of a trick here – why not make a devilled egg, devilled egg pie? I am going to make MY version very soon – stay tuned!

Devilled Egg Pie – The Verdict

These weren’t devilled eggs as we know them but the flavours were certainly devilled egg adjacent. The mix of the mashed potatoes, the sauce and the eggs was delicious and just about the most comforting thing I have eaten all year! The hardest thing about making them was actually having leftover mashed potatoes! I’ll certainly be making these again!

Oh, and the exact same night I made these, I got an email from Yinzerella about Pieathalon 2021. It’s coming…

04
Apr
2021

Eggs Hamine

categories: 1970's recipes, Africa, Easter, Eggs, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, World Cooking

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! At Maison de la retro foods, we are supplementing our chocolate eggs with some North African Hamine Eggs. These came to us via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. The book offers two versions of this recipe. There is the traditional way:

In Egypt there are special shops selling them; there, after the eggs have been cooked for 3 or 4 hours, they are put under the ashes of a fire and left for as long as 8 hours – this makes them as creamy as butter”

– Good Housekeeping World Cookery

Never mind the pyramids and the Sphinx. Get me over to Egypt pronto for some of those buttery eggs!!!

Eggs Hamine – The Recipe

The non-traditional version of these eggs is so easy!

Put the brown outside skins of some onions into a saucepan of ocld water with the eggs and boil for 2 hours or as long as possible. The onion skins turn the shells of the eggs and the whites brown. Shell and halve the eggs and serve hot or cold with lemon wedges, salt, pepper and mixed spices”

I cooked my eggs in the slow cooker for a full 8 hours.

Pre – Water

4 hours – One of the eggs cracked during the cooking but did not ooze out like they do when they crack during normal boiling.

Eight hours!

Note, if you decide to make these in your slow cooker, the onion skins will stain your slow cooker brown along with the eggs. Get ready to soak and scrub to remove it!

Eight hours and fifteen minutes!

I sprinkled my egg with some salt and some dukkah and dug in! It was delicious. There was a faint taste of something – not exactly onion but slightly savoury to the egg which was different to a normal boiled egg. I would not say that it was buttery but the white seemed more delicate than a normal boiled egg.

I was also very surprised to see that the onion skin dye had penetrated not only into the white which became a gorgeous soft caramel colour but also the yolk! This was startling because it is so strange to have a monochrome egg!

These were nice and an interesting experiment but for me, it was a long time to wait for a fancy boiled egg so I will probably not make them again. If I ever do get to Egypt though, I will be making a breakfast beeline for the Hamine Eggs shops!

Making these eggs might be a fun thing to do with kids for Easter or for a science project on osmosis.

Happy Easter everyone!

26
Mar
2021

REPOST – The Margaret Fulton Cookbook – Eggs

categories: Eggs

We can all take a lesson from the French when it comes to cooking eggs. In France the egg comes into its own, not only as a simple as delicious breakfast food, but as gourmet fare as well

– Margaret Fulton

We can also all take a lesson from modern sensibility in creating an introductory photo for a chapter.

1977 says…Copper pots, geraniums, mushrooms and tomatoes on top of omelettes, more tomatoes, more mushrooms, is that some cheese on the left? There’s definitely a teapot and some mugs and some eggs. So busy…

The modern response:

Modern minimalism for the win!

26
Oct
2020

Eggs Gratinée

categories: Eggs

I love eggs and am always happy to find a delicious new egg recipe. And these Eggs Gratinée could become one of my very favourites. It is:

Quick to prepare
Uses basic ingredients
Tastes delicious

Which ticks all my boxes for a quick weeknight supper.

And let’s not forget the absolute joy of cutting open that egg to see it still a little bit runny!!!!

This is like a Welsh Rarebit with Eggs. If you want to make it even more rarebitty, you can add a splash of Worchestershire sauce and a dollop of mustard into the sauce before grilling

The recipe made a lot more sauce than I needed for my eggs. Which was fine – it meant that there was leftover sauce to remake this for lunch the following day. If you are doing this, you can also poach some extra eggs and keep them in the fridge overnight. Lunch will be ready in less than 10!

A salad is the perfect healthy accompaniment to this. But if you wanted to have a side of chips to dip into the sauce, I won’t tell anyone!

The Recipe

Print

Eggs Gratinée

Print Recipe

A delicious light supper or work at home lunch.

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Scale

4 eggs
4 slices of sourdough bread
Cayenne Pepper (optional)
Chopped Chives or Parsley to garnish

For the Mornay Sauce:

30gm butter
30 gm plain flour
300ml milk
80ml Gruyere or Vintage cheddar cheese, grated

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

For the Mornay Sauce:

Melt the butter in a saucepan over high heat, and the flour and stir until sandy coloured (2-3 minutes).
Gradually add the milk, whisking to remove any lumps. Bring to the simmer.
Remove from the heat and stir through the grated cheese.

Poach the eggs in simmering water until soft poached (2-3 minutes).
Pop the bread into the toaster.
Preheat your grill to high
Once the toast has popped, rub each slice with the garlic clove. Place the toast into an ovenproof dish. Top with the eggs then spoon the sauce over.
Place under the grill until the sauce is golden and bubbly (2-3 minutes, but check frequently)
Sprinkle with cayenne pepper and garnish with some herby greenery
Serve with a salad.

Notes

Note: I did not add salt to this dish because I thought there was enough salt in the cheese. If you want more salt or freshly ground black pepper instead of the cayenne, grind it over at the end where I used the cayenne.

There’s not much more to say for such a simple recipe except

WE ARE FINALLY OUT OF LOCKDOWN TOMORROW!!!!

Shops are opening, restaurants are opening pubs are opening. I can get a hair cut and my legs waxed. In a week gyms will open and statewide travel restrictions will lift. I am both overjoyed and a little nervous. Now that it’s so close I am a little bit scared about being out the world again….

Wish me luck!

And have a great week.

Tag: eggs

The Recipes – Ceviche and Eggs a La Mexicana

The Mashed Potato Crust

Devilled Egg Pie – The Recipe

Devilled Egg Pie – The Verdict

Eggs Hamine – The Recipe

The Recipe

Eggs Gratinée

Ingredients

Instructions

Notes