scrambling

My method of cooking scrambled eggs and omelettes has recently changed, and it's such an improvement that every time I make scrambled eggs I think, "I should put this on the blog." Maybe everyone else already knows this tip, as it's apparently been around for many years, but it was new to me. So here goes.

If you like your fried eggs cooked through, but not dry or browned or crisp in any way - then this method is for you. And me. It's definitely the method for me.

The secret is adding a bit of starch to the eggs. I've experimented with the amount of starch - I'm using potato starch - and have settled on a much smaller amount than the (possibly original) version I've seen online.

Potato starch, salt, and pepper stirred into milk.
Eggs on deck.

Here's what I'm doing: 

for each egg, I mix 1/4 teaspoon potato starch with 1 Tablespoon milk in a small bowl, add seasonings, then beat in the eggs. I melt about 2 teaspoons of butter in a frying pan, then add the egg mixture. The amount of butter probably depends on the size of your pan; mine are the small blue Pyrex with detachable handles, made in the 1930s and 40s. A perfect size for two or three scrambled eggs. A bigger pan is much easier for omelettes.

Apart from the potato starch, everything is traditional scrambling: low/medium heat (on my gas stove, 3.5 on a dial of 10 is just right, and 4 is too hot), moving the eggs frequently as soon as they begin cooking, and taking the pan off the heat just before the eggs are completely done. Really, the only difference is that tiny amount of starch!

But the results have been consistently excellent. Best scrambled eggs I've ever had. Isn't it great when a tiny, simple change improves something you've been doing for years?

Did you know about this little piece of magic? If not, and if you like eggs that are consistently soft and neither runny nor dry, I think it's worth a try.

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another nation heard from

 

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good eggs

Two youngsters examining a rip in my trousers. I felt thoroughly judged.

There are currently seven hens here. Ethel the Elder was briefly alone until I could find six baby chooks in the Spring. Two of them have already started to lay, although not consistently; there are usually two eggs - one from Ethel - in the nest boxes every day, and occasionally three. The more the merrier from a practical standpoint, since they are all being fed expensive organic layer feed. But now that the Cold Times seem to be very much here, I did not expect anyone else to start laying until Spring.

However! This morning there were the usual two eggs in a nest box, but it was quite exciting because one of them was this (candlestick not included):

Which means another hen has begun to lay!

Here's how we can tell:

The little one on the bottom is the new arrival - the hen is wisely starting small.

In other news, last night I finally got the camera battery and the charger in the same place! I can take pictures again! Tell you what, there are some unexpected glitches created by trying to clean and organize the entire house. For two days I couldn't find the charger, and when it finally revealed itself, the battery was gone. Especially baffling since there was no reason for either to be anywhere other than where they are always kept. But they weren't. Something similar has happened with my new solar motion-sensor light, my supply of sketchbooks, and my Winter clothes. That last one needs to be addressed today, as it is Winter.

I hope everyone is planning a lovely weekend! And I hope you all know where your seasonal clothing was nicely folded and put away six months ago. Because it feels pretty silly when you can't find your own clothes, I can tell you.

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poultry report

Lovely organic eggs, collected this morning.

The first thing I do when I come in from morning chores is remove my gloves, earwarmer, and the two eggs in my pocket. In that order.

And here are the Providers of Eggs: Agatha and Eloise.

Photograph taken mid-November.

When we could still see the ground.

I haven't been doing much cooking lately but most days I have a fried egg in some form –  usually omelette-ish, with broccoli or cheese. A new discovery: a little leftover cooked sweet potato makes a lovely addition. It adds a richness of taste without overwhelming the eggs, and a slight density of texture, and just a hint of sweetness.

Agatha

Eloise

You may remember that the hens came here as pullets back in August, because Captain Hastings had become the only chicken on the place and needed company. Very sadly, only a few weeks after Agatha and Eloise arrived, Captain Hastings was killed - perhaps by a hawk. As soon as I realized he had not crowed at 4:20 that morning, I knew something was very wrong, and began looking for him. I found his remains not long after.

A sad and unexpected ending, but I'm so glad Captain Hastings' last weeks of life were very happy ones, spent busily keeping an eye on his little flock.

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the chicken and the egg

Soon it will be time to decide whether to add a new group of chicks to the flock.

At the moment, there are only five hens here. The two Buff Orpingtons (one seen above) and the Black Jersey Giant are a few years old now. The Rhode Island Red and the little brown hen are almost a year old. I bought them last autumn to bolster the winter egg supply. I've never added half-grown birds to my flock before, so I cautiously kept the newbies in the barn with the goats for a couple of weeks to watch for any health problems.

The Rhodie in quarantine.

The brown hen began to lay as soon as I brought her home. Her eggs are a very pale green. I've always had brown eggs, so the first light ones were a bit of a novelty. They were also sporadic and very variable in size, but since this was a pullet just beginning to lay, it seemed likely she'd soon settle down into producing a daily egg of consistent size. But she didn't. Instead, she went into a deep, long moult in November, and didn't lay another egg all winter.

The brown hen in moult.

Then all three older hens also decided to take the entire winter off. So for the past four months, the Rhode Island Red has been the only working hen on the place, cheerfully presenting me with a lovely organic egg almost every day.

Thank you, Little Red Hen!!

To recap:

I've been feeding five hens organically all Winter,

in order to have one egg daily.

I am not going to figure out how much those eggs have been costing me,

but it's been a worthwhile expense.

Apart from the value of having fresh, organic eggs in the larder,  

they have also provided a reliably joyful moment

in each dark morning of this bitter Winter.

There's a special pleasure in picking up a warm, newly-laid egg

and holding it in your cold hand for a moment

before continuing on to a series of very cold chores.

Thawing the frozen gate latches. 

Breaking the ice in water buckets.

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Plus, they're pretty. See? 

In the past couple of weeks, the brown hen has just begun to lay. But again, not every day - unless she is laying some of her eggs outside the Poultry Palace. I've had hens try all sorts of places: under a lawn chair on the screen porch, behind a shovel in the goat barn, on top of a tall stack of hay bales...I'll let you imagine how I discovered that last location.

So this morning I kept all the hens in the Courtyard for a while, to encourage laying inside the Palace. Shortly before noon, there was a lot of the sudden, exuberant hollering that some hens do to announce the recent achievement of an egg. Since I didn't recognize the voice, I was not surprised to find a pale green egg in the nest in the Palace, right next to the daily brown egg from the Rhodie.

Here it is:

Do you think this is what was meant by the recipe

that called for "one and a half eggs"?

And in case you may think I just have freakishly tiny hands,

here are the two eggs side by side:

Oh, little brown hen.

 I do wish you would try to pace yourself.

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ya gotta break some eggs

Really must pull myself together here...I promise you babygoat naming and a kitchen tip, then - surprise!! - I give you astronauts and the International Space Station.

Catching up on earthly matters now!

First, please join me in the kitchen, for a recipe and a tip.

Have you ever heard the bizarrely obvious expression, "Ya gotta break some eggs if you want to make mayonnaise"?  Well, I have been making my own mayonnaise (after breaking the necessary eggs) for several months now.  Homemade mayonnaise is easy, quick, and delicious.  Bonus: the extremely simple recipe has room for flexibility and experimentation (= fun!).  As long as I have a blender and a few simple ingredients on hand, I may never go back to storebought.  If my blender breaks, I'll try using a whisk...that's how good this is.

Mayonnaise typically contains raw eggs, which I understand may not sit well with everyone.  I believe there are also "cooked" mayo recipes, so if you have experience with that method, please feel free to share in the comments.

Meanwhile, here's how I do it.

First, blend thoroughly:

2 eggs, largish
1 tsp mustard (dry)
1 tsp salt
4 Tablespoons vinegar (I've been using apple cider vinegar)

Then, with blender still running, slowly drizzle in:

1.5 c vegetable oil

The whole process takes maybe a couple of minutes.  I love it when the mayonnaise suddenly emulsifies like magic...my blender goes zzzzzzzzzz, zzz,zzz,zzz,z...z...z...and it's done.

I have been experimenting with mixtures of oils (such as half safflower, half sesame; half olive, half sesame, etc.) and also various types of salt.  So far, each batch has been different and each has been good!

When I used olive oil, the consistency remained a bit thinner (there was no z...z...z), but instead of tinkering with it, I decided it would be a fine component for a salad dressing if I didn't use it for sandwiches (which I did).  I wonder if olive oil made the difference?  It could also be the variable size of the eggs from my hens.  Will experiment further!

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And here is the related "tip" - it's about breaking eggs, and it's something I heard in a recent podcast from David Leite, author of The New Portuguese Table.

I stumbled across David's blog several years ago, whilst spending hours googling in an attempt to figure out why my caldo verde (literally, "green soup") never seemed to taste quite the same as the caldo verde I ate nearly every day in Portugal.*

But no soupy sidetracking (or soupy twist!) here; back to eggs.  You probably already know that an easy way to remove eggshell fragments from a bowl of eggs is by using one of the shell halves as a scoop, right?  Just like an easy way to separate egg whites and yolks is by pouring the egg back and forth between halves of the eggshell, retaining the yolk as the white slips into a waiting bowl.  That thin, sharp edge of shell really does the trick.

But this new (to me, anyway) method of cracking eggs helps prevent eggshell fragments from the get-go.

Ready?  Here it is:

instead of cracking an egg against the edge of a bowl,

try cracking the side of the egg against a flat surface.

I know! 

Totally non-intuitive, right?

Sounds like a guaranteed way to make a horrible mess!

Well, I've been doing this for weeks now, and not only have I not made a mess, but I haven't had to scoop out a single shell fragment.

Hold the egg like this, and tap the side firmly against a flat surface.  I've tried using the kitchen counter, a flat plate, and the bottom of Piper's dish.
Guess which one was Piper's favorite.

The graphically-implausible result: instead of cracking roughly along a line (blue), the egg cracks in a sort of crater (yellow). I don't know why this works to prevent fragments. It may be physics. Or it may be magic. Like the mayonnaise.

If you decide to give this egg-cracking method a go, please let me know how it works for you.  I'm not sure if there if will be a difference in storebought and homegrown eggs, but maybe together we can gather some information.

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Last but by no means least:
the two baby goats now have official names!

I like to choose names based on what is growing, budding, or blooming when the kids are born.  Violet's baby seemed to be born with her name, but it took a while to determine just the right name for Lily's baby.  Now they are both answering (well, sort of) to their names, so it's time to (re)introduce them to the blog.

With just a little bit of fanfare then...

tatata DA taDAHHHHH!!!

Sambucus

here with her mama, Violet

~

and Tsuga (with her mama, Lily of the Valley) 

Who is holding who in place? Hard to say. I think it's mutual.

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Speaking of the kids, I know there has been a shortage of pictures lately.

I'm sorry.  It is not for lack of trying!

Remember when it was easy to get a fairly nice image?

Look!  It's a baby goat being still!!

It is much harder to get nice images of the kids at the moment, because now if I stand in the paddock they consider it an open invitation to climb up my legs, and if I am anywhere near their level, sitting on a rock for instance, they either climb up my back or leap without warning into my lap or even onto my shoulders.  Sambucus will sometimes sit quietly for a minute or so, but Tsuga is simply explosive.

A few days ago, in a last-ditch effort to get her in focus, I tried holding her on my lap with one hand while I held the camera in the other hand.  Rookie mistake!!  Tsuga sat still for a couple of shots, happily chewing on my scarf.  Two seconds after this picture was taken, she suddenly threw her head back and caught me right across the throat with her little rock-hard skull.  Before I could move, she flung her head the other way and got me full on the mouth.  Why?  She was trying to see what was behind her.  Because it might have been something interesting.  Tell you what...it's really, really hard to get a good picture of the kids at the moment!
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*  I never asked David about the soup (I think I may have been a bit shy about commenting on blogs in those days) but after extensive experimentation I have since come to believe the reason my caldo verde doesn't taste the same as the caldo verde I ate in the Ribatejo is because I am eating it in Massachusetts.  Further research is clearly in order.
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P.S.  Still a couple of days left to enter the May Giveaway! Good luck :)
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