One Ingredient: Eggs
Photos by Michael Piazza / Styled by Catrine Kelty
The days are getting a bit longer, the sun a bit warmer, the scent of thawed earth is in the air and birds are chirping in the trees. Spring is around the corner and I am itching to get in the garden. This sense of renewal and excitement is infectious and spreads all the way to my kitchen: new ingredients, new recipes, new season. The Easter and Passover holidays are another good reason to come up with spring-like menus to entertain family and friends, especially featuring eggs.
There are always local eggs year-round, but hens’ production increases after the winter months. As a child, I learned from my parents' laying hens that light, not the temperature, affects egg laying. Hens need about 12 to 15 hours of daylight in order to keep producing. As the days begin to grow longer, egg production goes up! No wonder eggs are associated with spring and everything new.
This simple ingredient is truly amazing. An egg on its own—fried, poached or scrambled—is a meal in itself, for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Separate an egg and there are even more possibilities: Whip the whites and you have meringue or pavlova; whisk the yolks with sugar and cream for custards, sauces or ice cream. Mix whole eggs with flour and milk and you have cakes, muffins or quickbreads. Eggs are the magic that binds most baked goods, both sweet and savory.
For the following recipes I played on eggs’ versatility and simplicity for a first course, main course and a few desserts. Each of these dishes can be made ahead of time, assembled and served the day of your dinner. All the ingredients are easily sourced, especially with all the herbs sprouting in gardens and appearing at farmers markets.
Some of these dishes are dear to my heart and bring back memories as they are inspired from family recipes.
My mother would make a flan (she called it “crème renversée,” upside-down cream) as her go-to dessert if she did not have time to get ingredients for a cake when we had guests for dinner— there were always eggs, sugar and vanilla in the house. I put a little Québécois twist on mine by using maple sugar in place of cane sugar. When making the flan, don’t throw away those six egg whites! Use them to make my Coconut-Cardamom Macaroons.
On a weeknight, as a sweet treat my mom would make îles flottantes. The presentation made us feel like royalty and your family will too, never suspecting how easy this dessert is to make. The combination of the light, cloud-like egg white floating in the sweet vanilla-scented custard, along with the crunch of roasted almonds, evokes happy childhood memories for me.
Serving an egg salad as a first course is a bit rich and decadent, and the reason why I only serve it once a year—on Easter. This was one of my mother-in-law’s staple dishes for Sunday supper and my husband (the younger child) was in charge of making the sauce; it’s a great way to involve the children in the kitchen. Maybe that is where he got his love for cooking; in our house he is now the master of sauces. I added the tarragon, an herb friendly to eggs, but you can easily swap it for parsley or basil.
Eggs poached in tomatoes are one of my favorite simple comfort foods. The herbs and fresh ricotta I added here hint at spring, while creamy white beans make the sauce into a thicker stew, a delicious dinner when served with salad and big chunks of crusty bread. A nice way to transition from one season to another.
These simple recipes don’t require many ingredients, so it is important to get the best and freshest ones possible. When it comes to locally sourced eggs, the color does not matter—brown, white, speckled or blue, the color of the shell only signifies the breed of chicken, not flavor. How vibrant the yellow of the yolk is depends on what the hens eat; a diet rich in carotenoids means a richer, more orange yolk, but lighter-colored yolks are just as nutritious All that matters is that you like the taste; so make sure you try different sources until you find one you love.
This story appeared in the Spring 2020 issue.
