an Ode to Eggs

Mainely Maine with Tips from the Mediterranean (and a Lusciously Lemony Recipe)

 

It’s the simplest, most basic of foods, the one cooks turn to when there’s nothing to eat in the house—because there’s almost always an egg or two or three in the pantry, ready to be scrambled into a quick supper, or tossed with hot pasta to make a rich carbonara, or poached in chicken stock to turn that unassuming broth into chicken soup. “Put an egg on it” is the quickest way to make something special out of nothing much.

And eggs are the easiest thing in a cook’s repertoire: You know what they say about a hapless cook—she can’t even boil an egg!

So why do springtime and eggs seem to go together? There’s a reason for it, of course: as the sun begins to strengthen and the grass begins to green, the hens in the

farmyard start to lay once more after their winter hiatus. Which is why eggs are so closely tied to the two great Mediterranean spring festivals, Easter and Passover. (Modern industrial eggs are available 365 days a year but we won’t go there.) The egg on the Seder plate, the colored eggs in the Easter basket, are there to announce that winter is over and new life has begun. (Yes, I know the Seder egg is supposedly a stand-in for the sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple but it’s hard to resist spring symbolism all the same.)

Fortunately, eggs have crept out from under the dishonor in which they were held for decades, vilified for high cholesterol content and banned from the tables of anyone who feared heart disease. No longer! Eggs are indeed high in cholesterol, but modern researchers agree that dietary cholesterol is not really a problem for most people. It does not raise serum or blood cholesterol, which is more likely caused by a diet high in saturated fat, or by an unhappy luck of the genes.

Eggs, as traditional kitchen folklore has always held, are good for you, an excellent source of protein of course, low in total fat, with zero carbs and just 71 calories in a normal large egg. They’re good sources of iron, selenium, phosphorus, and riboflavin, as well as vitamin B12. They’re also well supplied with antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin which protect against macular degeneration, among other benefits. Did your mother tell you eggs are good for your eyes? Mine did, and she was right!

But what kind of eggs will you choose? Cage-free, free-range, pastured, pasteurized, organic, brown or white? The choice is confusing but for most and best flavor, my vote goes to eggs bought from farmers who tend their own chickens. Straight to the

source, you’ll find out how those chickens are raised, what they’ve been fed, and how long ago the eggs were laid. In Maine, I’m fortunate to have a range of options to satisfy my egg-needs, from farmer’s markets to various hen houses along my daily routes. A current favorite is the Hennery of Hope, so-called because it’s in Hope, a neighboring farm community here on the coast of Maine. The eggs are fresh, they’re unwashed (a plus—see below), and the yolks are stand-out, stand-up gold, indicating the ladies have been fed a nourishing diet that probably includes bugs and worms from the farmyard.

Brown eggs are the universal favorite in New England but white or brown, the flavor and goodness are exactly the same. And here’s an interesting fact to put in your egg file: Eggs in North America must be washed before they can be sold at retail. Not a bad idea, you’re thinking? Think again. Eggs come with a natural protective coating that gets dissolved in the wash water. In Italy, where I live part of the year, eggs don’t have to be refrigerated, while in the U.S., I’m told, it’s best to keep them, if not refrigerated, in a very cool place to make up for their lack of protection. (You may find that eggs bought from the farmer, like those I get at the Hennery of Hope, have not been washed, which is all to the good.)

What about salmonella? If you think eggs are risky, cook them thoroughly, either hard-boiling or baking in cakes or cookies. Easter produces dozens of hard-boiled eggs,

colored and decorated for the Easter egg hunt and forgotten shortly thereafter. But they’re still good for something special—best of all as deviled eggs, a seriously delicious, old-fashioned treat, featured at countless church picnics and Grange Hall suppers. Do your stuffed eggs up in style, mixing the yolks with a little mustard, some

capers or pickles and a few green olives chopped together with fresh green herbs (tarragon, chervil, basil), the whole bound with mayonnaise and garnished with a dab of mayo on top.

Take a tip from the Italian kitchen and drop eggs, one after the other, into a slowly simmering bean-and-pasta soup, then serve up a poached egg with each soup portion, perhaps with a little grated parmigiano sprinkled on top. Another Mediterranean egg trick I learned from Maria Jose San Roman, a fine chef from Alicante in southeast Spain: Use gently fried eggs as a sauce to top fried potatoes: Cook very thinly sliced potatoes--in olive oil, of course—until they’re brown and crispy on the edges, then

arrange on a platter, season generously, and top with eggs similarly fried, the yolks basted with hot oil. When the yolks get broken with a fork, they make a rich, golden sauce for the potatoes. Nothing could be simpler—or better.

 While I was thinking about eggs recently, I came across Lisa Steele’s Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook, an unlikely paean to the daily egg. An eager backyard chicken farmer, Lisa

lives with her flock on a small farm in Dixmont, Maine, and blogs as enthusiastically about raising hens as she does about using the eggs. So when someone asked me recently what to do with too many eggs, I turned to Lisa’s book and found what I’d been looking for, a fine recipe for a cake that uses the better part of a carton of eggs—eight of them in fact. Pound cake, you may remember, calls for a pound of everything—eggs, flour, sugar, and butter, and eight large eggs makes a pound, more or less. Without getting too finicky about measurements that will mean 3 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar and 4 sticks of butter. Here’s the recipe that I’ve adapted from Lisa’s book, adding lemon zest and a little lemon juice because that seems like the taste of spring to me. For best results, make sure both the eggs and the butter are at room temperature.

            Lemon-Pound Cake

            You could bake this in a 10-inch Bundt pan or an 8-inch loaf pan.

• Butter and confectioner’s sugar for the pan

• 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

• Big pinch of fine sea salt

• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

• ¼ teaspoon baking soda

• 2 cups (1 pound, 4 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature

• 2 cups sugar

• 8 eggs, at room temperature

• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

• Grated zest of a large organic lemon

• More confectioner’s sugar to dust at the end, if you wish

Liberally butter the inside of your pan and dust lightly with confectioner’s sugar.

Combine flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda, tossing with a fork to mix well.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until very light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Beat in the vanilla, the lemon juice, and the lemon zest.

Set the oven on 350ºF.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the batter, a little at a time. Stir in each addition with a rubber spatula or beat on very low speed. Turn the batter into the prepared pans, smoothing the top with the spatula. Transfer to the hot oven and bake for 55 minutes to 1 hour, until the top of the cake is golden and it is pulling slightly away from the sides of the pan.

Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes. Then run a knife around the edges of the pan to loosen the cake and invert the pan on the rack. When the cake is cool, dust with confectioner’s sugar.

Serve with whipped cream or ice cream or early spring berries.