Pan-Roasted Asparagus and Slow Poached Egg and Miso Butter

There are two things I've been obsessed with lately. One is eggs. The other is the new spring fruits and veggies. I'm mad about them, and desperate for them. I spend half an hour circling the farmers market this week before I came to terms with the fact that the East Coast just didn't have strawberries yet, but I didn't leave empty handed. My bag was bulging, it is officially Asparagus season.

Since my experiments with Ginger Scallion noodles, I've been scouring my Momofuku cookbook for recipes I could make without spending hundreds of dollars on obscure ingredients and a cold smoker. With my obsession for cooking embryonic food and the piles of asparagus popping up all around me, it was time for my next David Chang challenge. There it was, on page 90, Pan-Roasted Asparagus and Slow Poached Egg in Miso Butter. The set up for the recipe seemed fairly simple, and astoundingly all things I keep in my cabinet, with one exception. The damned miso butter. I had purchased Chang's miso butter at Milk Bar a few weeks back, played with it exactly once, then left it out overnight and had to toss it all out because of damned "food safety" concerns.

Miso butter is not hard to make, literally mix together miso and butter. Ta da! This method, however, assumes you are the kind of person who just has packages of miso on hand. Well, now I am one of those people. At the Assi Asian grocery near my mother's house last weekend I picked up my very own package of miso. I have no idea if it's the shiro (white) miso that Chang recommends, it just said "Miso" and then a lot of characters I can't read. When I mixed it together it looked like the one I bought at Milk Bar so I'm counting it as a win for me.

The whole recipe comes together rather quickly, as long as you have that poached egg. That slow poached egg. Poached eggs are generally broken, put in a dish, and then slid into water. If your lucky the whole thing does spread apart and go to shit. Momofuku avoids this problem by slow poaching the eggs in their own shells, bringing the water to between 140 and 145 degrees (a nifty test for my new digital thermometer) and then plunking in the eggs for 40 to 45 minutes. When you crack the shell, out comes poached egg, nice and pretty. Since they keep (in their shells) for up to 24 hours in the fridge, they can be made ahead of time. I was curious though, if I did not have the nearly an hour to make the egg the Momofuku way, could I pull off the traditional?  Blog commenter Deanna pointed me toward Smitten Kitchen's tutorial. But that didn't satisfy my desperate need to cheat. (And according to my pasta making teacher this week, I'm a big cheater, with my Kitchen Aid and all.)

I decided to use a brand new Poach Pods in a side by side test. These silicon little toys float on top of your simmering water, keeping your eggs in tact and pretty. I did a side by side comparison, poaching one egg the normal way and one in the pod. The pod has to be lightly oiled before use, so it's not technically the completely "oilless cooking" that pure poaching is. The color of lose egg was a purer white then the Poach Pod one, and had a more natural shape to the finished product. The Poach Pod egg was very obviously the shape of a Poach Pod, so if you were doing this for company, slow poaching or normal poaching would probably be best. If you were just trying to knock together something like this recipe or an Eggs Benedict for yourself though, the Poach Pod has it on ease and piece of mind. There is absolutely no need to worry that your egg will break apart or will be undercooked when you use a pod.

Will, as previously mentioned, is not an egg fan. Can't stand even the smell of them actually. Therefore I waited until a night he was working and prepared a dinner for 1. It was a tiny meal, if you are looking for a filling main course maybe throw a piece of chicken next to it.  I still made plenty of miso butter, because I love having a new condiment around to play with, and it's tasty stuff.

Pan Roasted Asparagus and Poached Egg & Miso Butter
Adapted from Momofuku

Ingredients:
-1/4 cup of Miso (and pray it's the right one)
-3 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
-6 stalks of Asparagus, ends snapped, peeled if they are thick
-Kosher Salt
-1/2 teaspoon sherry vinegar
-1 poached egg (slow if you're doing this the Momofuku way, pictured right)
-Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
First make miso butter: In a small bowl combine 2 1/2 tablespoons of butter with miso until well mixed. Stir until it's one color, not full of chunkiness. Reserve half of the mixture at room temperature for the dish, the other half can be stored, wrapped in the fridge for a few weeks. Trust me, it's a fun ingredient, you'll want to play with it.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of butter in a medium skillet over medium high heat. When the bubbles have cleared, put in asparagus. If making more don't overcrowd, do in batches with fresh butter if need be. When asparagus begins to brown (about 2 or 3 minutes) season them with salt and pepper, turn the heat down to medium, and flip with tongs. Brown on reverse side, another few minutes. When you have some satisfying color and tenderness, remove from pan and lay on paper towel lined plates to drain.

Put sherry vinegar in a microwave safe dish for about 10 seconds. Using a small saucepan, mix warmed vinegar with reserved miso butter over low heat until butter starts to separate but does not melt, about 2 minutes. Spread miso butter on the center of the plate in a "thickish puddle".  Arrange asparagus on top of the butter and place the egg on top of the asparagus. Finish with a small pinch of salt and a grind of fresh pepper.

Look how much it looks like the picture! I was very proud of myself. The taste was phenomenal, salty, tangy, buttery, the crunch of the asparagus versus the softness of the egg, the smoothness of the egg versus the graininess of the miso, it was a pretty banging and impressive dish.

Soy Sauce Eggs

Do you ever have those restaurant foods that drive you mad? A single dish that will float in your mind, demanding you return to the establishment to sate a craving? To me, this is the Soy Sauce Egg (otherwise known as Shio Tama) at Ramen Takumi (formerly Setagaya) near Union Square.. These are soft boiled eggs, with a tantalizingly runny center with a solid white, marinated in soy sauce and left floating in the soup. I will return again and again to consume these salty, slurp-worthy treats. The addiction was becoming too much, a month would go by where I didn't have time to travel downtown for Ramen, and I would start to try to find reasons just to be in that neighborhood. After reading Momofuku for 2's posting about Soy Sauce Eggs, it hit me. Why didn't I just make them myself? Imagine, any time I wanted I could indulge in these perfectly salty snacks, without the assistance of the F train. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

Apparently most "Soy Sauce Eggs" are hard boiled. Hard boiled eggs are a snack that had been around my house as a kid that I was resoundingly against. The white part was always fine, but the chalky, solid yolk I found really gross. If I was going to create this I was going to have to do it in steps.

1. Figure out how to perfectly "soft boil"

2. Figure out how to perfectly peel this somewhat delicate creations

3. Decipher the best Soy Sauce based marinade

4. Create the best method of serving and devouring my new treat

I will not disclose how many eggs I went through teaching myself to soft boil. There were the ones that were in too long, reaching that point of hard boiled with the gross chalky center, and worse, there were the ones not done enough, creating an egg too delicate and runny to work with.  A soft boiled egg, it turns out, can be achieved by carefully submerging your egg in rapidly boiling water for 6 minutes, but to get that perfect, almost gel like yolk that I love in ramen exactly 7 minutes is what you need. Once removed from the water, submerge your eggs in ice water to stop its cooking.

Peeling eggs was another challenge. The first attempt left the egg white torn and divited, not exactly perfect for submerging in a marinade or for creating a pretty snack. I saw videos on the internet where, after removing the top and bottom of the shell, the egg can be easily "blown" out of the remaining shell. Apparently this only works for hard boiled eggs. When you try it with a soft boiled egg, you end up with yolk all over your jeans, your hands and your floor. Trial and error people. Finally I learned to tap it gently on the bottom, where the natural air pocket is, and delicately peel from there. Some people hold that if you put vinegar in the ice water bowl it makes the shell more brittle and easier to peel, but it seemed the same either way to me.

Finally it was time for me to choose my marinade. Many marinades consist of water, sugar, and--of course--soy sauce. Some include green onions and ginger. Most, it seems, involve simmering the eggs directly in the marinade. That last part seemed like a dangerous idea to me. I had creating the perfect consistency of soft boiled egg down to a science. Since most soy sauce recipes use hard boiled eggs, exposing them to some extra heat wasn't a big deal. To my perfectly gooey yolks, it was a very big deal. Momofuku for 2 however, did not put the eggs into a simmering marinade. She made a combination of soy sauce, mirin, and sherry vinegar, and just lets them soak for an hour. I went for a combination of the two ideas. This method is essentially of my own invention, stealing bits of ideas here and there. This is not to be taken as an extremely authentic way to create soy sauce eggs, it's just the recipe that worked for me.

Soy Sauce Egg Marinade

Ingredients:
-1/2 cup of water
-3 Tablespoons of Soy Sauce
-1 teaspoon of sugar
-1 green onion, sliced, white and light green part only
-3 Soft Boiled Eggs, peeled

Directions:
Whisk together water, soy sauce, sugar and green onion in a small saucepan. Simmer for 5 minutes. Remove saucepan from heat and allow to cool. Place eggs in a sealable storage bag and pour marinade over top, submerging the eggs. Refrigerate for 1 hour. If the eggs are not completely covered, turn the eggs after half an hour to get even staining. Remove from marinade and either eat immediately or keep refrigerated in a sealed container for up to 2 days.

Finally I had to find the perfect way of serving these delicious, salty, gooey treats. Momofuku for 2 used green onions and fried shallots to top. An Epicurous recipe for soy quail eggs used sesame oil. Again, I went for an amalgamation. Slicing the eggs in half, I arranged them on a plate. Having tried them both cold, straight out of the fridge, and warmed in the microwave for 15 seconds (just enough to warm without further cooking the yolks) I prefer warm, but both are acceptable. I put about a Tablespoon of sesame oil in a small pan over medium heat. When it was hot, I sliced up a shallot and sauteed it in the oil. Once crisp and browned on the edges (about 2-3 minutes) I poured the entire contents of the pan over the eggs. On some eggs, if I felt I needed a bit more of the rich soy sauce, I would put just a drop or two of sauce straight into the gooey yolks, where the drops would expand into veins of flavor. It's really one of those recipes you can play with and add things where desired. I had made a perfect snack, with all of the soft, slurpy, saltiness I had spent so much time obsessing over while eating ramen.

I have made many of these over the last few weeks. Sodium intake might be becoming an issue. I should stop soon. Will might be breathing a sigh of relief, thinking no more eggs all over his kitchen, no more of this food he finds so gross popping up a few times a week. I, however, am not ready to give up eggs anytime soon. I still want to learn how to poach one. Stay tuned.

Discovering the Egg

There are times when my husband comes home, and looks at me like I'm crazy. These times usually coincide with some crazy cooking project I've delved into. When the kitchen was so covered in flour from my fresh pasta experiments, when the entire apartment was filled with the heavy sent of barbecue sauce, I was the recipient of extremely concerned glances and the deeply worried "Honey?" Such was the scene this past weekend as our waste bin filled with egg shells. He got home, glanced at the cookbooks and magazines that covered every available surface, and knew something was up.

Easter looming, his 27 year old wife had decided to learn how to cook an egg.

I've dabbled before. In high school I would make scrambled eggs, before I finally admitted to myself that I don't really like a whisked and fluffy egg. I've fried eggs, made them Over Easy, and even tried to craft an Egg White Omelet, which hasn't been very successful thus far, more of a spattered but tasty egg white mess really. But on the whole I don't take on the shelled wonders very often, relegating them to ingredient rather then main dish status. Partly it's been because Will really, really hates eggs, so I would be the only one eating them. Partly it's been because, honest to god, I don't know how to cook them in the more sophisticated ways. Speaking to friends, I don't think I'm the only 20 something in America staring down an egg with a bit of bewilderment.

With Easter looming, however, surrounding by the imagery of the egg, I had to have them. I wanted to devour solid whites and runny yolks. I wanted them flavored and boiled and baked, combined with herbs, heated gently, I wanted to bite and slurp and revel in the eggy goodness. NY is a great place to find a variety of eggs, at one Whole Foods alone I have seen quail, ostrich, duck, and emu. As an egg novice, I decided to play it safe and stick to the basic chicken.

There were two big experiments that went into my egg weekend madness. The first was my quest for the perfect soy sauce egg, a quest I blame entirely on the blog Momofuku for 2 which talked about them so temptingly last week. As of this post, it has not gone well. The first trials have been delicious, but not pretty. The perfect boiling times have not been worked out yet, the perfect marinade is still being toyed with, and honestly? It turns out I don't know how to peel an egg. Egg. Shells. Everywhere. Apparently there's a way of getting around this by blowing out the egg. Ew. Stay tuned, I will keep you posted on my progress. If my husband doesn't kill me first.

The second experiment is something I have been mulling in my head for quite awhile. I wanted the sophisticated brunch treat that is the baked egg. I first read about this delicate dish in the January 2008 issue of Gourmet, with amazing food porn splayed across it's pages. In Chef Scott Peacock's recipe little individual servings splayed across an outdoor table, and I felt that one could not start a day in a more impressive and grown up way then by serving up these little beauties. The filling ingredients of spinach and ham were not things I had on hand this weekend, however. What I really needed was something that incorporated cheese. In a bit of impulse shopping over the past two weeks I have ended up with an Irish Cheddar, a Swiss, and a Gruyere all staring up at me in the fridge, begging to be incorporated into various dishes. The epidemic is so bad that, attending a wine and Spanish food tasting at Despana in my neighborhood this weekend, I had to beg Will to not allow me to walk out with any cheese. I mourn the Manchego I left behind.

My research turned out a baked dish with Gruyere, but it included herbs I did not have on hand and was made in a big dish with 10 eggs, not the individual servings I was looking for. Since my husband wasn't going to help me consume this, the individual serving was key.

Eggs with Cream, Gruyere, and Shallot

Makes 2 Individual Servings

Ingredients:

- 1 Tablespoon and 1 Teaspoon Butter plus extra for greasing ramekins

- 1 Shallot, sliced

- 1 Clove of Garlic, Chopped

- 1/4 Cup Shredded Gruyere

- 3 Tablespoons Cream or Half and Half

- 2 Large Eggs

- 1/2 Teaspoon Dried Thyme

- Salt and Pepper

Equipment: 2 (6oz) Ramekins

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the middle. Butter ramekins.

Saute shallots in butter until beginning to crisp, about 2-3 minutes in a small pan over medium heat. In the final minute add garlic and saute until fragrant. Remove and divide into ramekins. Stir in shredded cheese. Spoon 1 tablespoon of cream over each serving. Crack 1 egg into each ramekin. Spoon half a tablespoon of cream over each egg. Season with salt, pepper, and thyme. Dot each top with a scant 1/2 teaspoon of butter.

Put ramekins in a shallow baking pan and bake, rotating pan halfway through baking, until whites are just set but the yolks are still runny, 15 to 20 minutes. If you do this in a toaster oven, the time will be closer to 12-15 minutes.

The ingredients are completely based on what I had around, resulting in a perfect cheesy, veggie, herby combo. But really, you can add what you wish. Scallions instead of shallot, or add some mushroom. Fresh Rosemary would be a good substitute for the dried thyme, if you have it around. Heck if my thyme plant hadn't died, I would have preferred fresh.

I served this with a slice of toast on the side, and it was delectable, gooey and yet still sophisticated. It the best of two egg worlds really, the mix and match ability of an omelet, but the runny yolk of a fried egg. Baking gives it that fancy edge that just screams "I should have a mimosa in my hand right now." I'm really always looking for a way to work that phrase into a conversation. Really it's the second best part of brunch. You know, besides the eggs.

PS- Reminder that the Short and Saucy pan (just like mine) giveaway ends tomorrow at midnight Eastern Time! Run over to our 100th blog and leave a comment! And isn't it pretty?

Egg Drinks Redux

So Heather's on an egg kick. There's a lot of them about as of late. It makes me a little nervous because I'm not the biggest fan in the world. More specifically, I like them in a certain context. I like them as an ingredient in things--cakes, french toast. But there's something about the smell of a cooking egg that nauseates me.

But raw egg, which is arguably grosser, doesn't bother me at all. I thought with all the eggs in the house, I would try my hand at some more old timey egg cocktails. I realized after the last egg cocktail blog that I focused only on drinks that involve egg yolk. A huge oversight on my part. The white can add just as much to a spirited drink.

The Savoy Cocktail Book offers a lively recipe for something called The Elk's Own Cocktail.

Elk's Own Cocktail

From The Savoy Cocktail Book

-The White of 1 Egg

-1/2 Canadian Club Whisky

-1/2 Port Wine

-The Juice of 1/2 Lemon

-1 Teaspoonful Sugar

Shake well, strain into wineglass and add a slice of pineapple.

We found a slightly modified recipe on the internet that included Rye Whiskey (we didn't have Canadian Club,) simple syrup instead of sugar and actual measurements which help a lot, but the basic idea is the same. The end result is tart, sweet and savory. It's also not quite as heavy as the egg yolk drinks. And that froth is pretty nifty.

Also as a reminder, the giveaway contest is still going on. Get your entries in by this Friday to be entered. Read the last blog post for details.

The Incredible Drinkable Egg

A few weeks ago--in Anthropologie of all places--I spotted an old timey looking book called The Savoy Cocktail Book. Heather dragged me there to look at housewares and such so I was groping for entertainment to begin with--you know, between being fascinated by floral patterns on linens. The book is a 1999 reprint of a 1930 book that features all kinds of specialties from the Savoy Hotel in the period surrounding prohibition. While Heather was looking at clothes, dishes, and bedspreads, I flipped through the thing and decided that I needed to own it. I'm a big fan of all things anachronistic and old timey.

As I examined the book a little more closely in the comfort of my own home, I realized that many of these drinks would be a little harder to execute than I thought. Many of them call for things I've never heard of. Hercules, for example, is one I had to look up. The internet cocktail database lists Hercules as a "defunct proprietary British sweetened anis-flavored absinthe and/or substitute. Possibly wine-based." Scratch that as an ingredient. Many of the drinks include gin--of which I am not fond--and absinthe, which can be upwards of fifty dollars a bottle.

One common thread that runs through many of the recipes is their inclusion of raw egg. I've been reading a lot lately about fancy bar around the city including raw eggs sin their cocktails to give them a thicker, smoother, frothier texture. Heather forwarded me an article in the New York Times the other day about a bar called the Pegu Club and their brush with the health department for serving raw egg in cocktails. The Times then printed a follow-up article about the health departments retraction and the Pegu Club's vindication. I, as an amateur, don't have to worry about that; also I don't like to shy away from a challenge. If Rocky can down multiple raw eggs on their own, surely I can enjoy downing one mixed with tasty liquors.

I set to work earmarking the recipes that seemed the most delicious and could be made with the ingredients on hand. I narrowed it down to two. For Heather, the "Coffee Cocktail" which contains no coffee. It only has the name because of the way it looks. I tried a little when it was mixed. I wasn't a huge fan because I don't like port, but the sweetness was a plus and the texture and froth were great.

Coffee Cocktail

From The Savoy Cocktail Book

-The Yolk of 1 Egg

-1 Teaspoonful Sugar or Gomme Syrup

-1/3 Port Wine

-1/6 Brandy

-1 Dash Curacao

Shake well, strain into a small wineglass, and grate a little nutmeg on top.

The one I decided to try was called the "Thunder and Lightning Cocktail" This one was a bit simpler and had the same thickness but less froth. Heather said it reminded her of Egg Nog. I've actually never had Egg Nog so I can't comment. I will say that though it had its fair share of sweetness, it was also quite savory due to the cayenne pepper. I enjoyed it but it's probably not something I would make often.

Thunder and Lightning Cocktail

From The Savoy Cocktail Book

-The Yolk of 1 Egg

-1 Teaspoonful Powdered Sugar

-1 Glass Brandy

Shake well and strain into medium size glass. Dash of Cayenne Pepper on top.

The Savoy Cocktail Book has its flaws. There's no glossary or index, so it can be hard to find things easily. There are also no standard measurements. Occasionally it will just give you a fraction or say something like "1 Glass Brandy." What's a glass? How big a glass? I hate lacking this type of knowledge. But the book, with all its flaws is a great jumping off point and a great insight into the way people used to enjoy a cocktail in the years between World War I and World War II. Plus it gives me the excuse to buy and experiment with mixers that I never would have otherwise considered. Maybe soon I'll have an extra fifty bucks for absinthe.