That’s me holding a Martha-esque fancy-schmancy asparagus and lump crabmeat quiche! When sliced, each piece features an asparagus spear running down the center. Nice. I prepared it for a video I shot in Maryland two weeks ago. The Maryland Egg Council is participating in a “What’s For Dinner” advertising campaign with four local CBS Radio affiliates, and the quiche was one of nine recipes I prepared for the campaign. Radio listeners are encouraged to visit the station’s website to view my recipe demonstration video!
In addition to the Maryland Egg Council, the advertising campaign includes the Department of Agriculture’s “Maryland’s Best” (a program promoting local fresh fruits and vegetables), Whole Foods and Liberatore’s, a local restaurant chain. As you can imagine, all of the recipes I made focused on fresh produce, eggs of course, and local ingredients. The taping was done in the Culinary Center of a brand new Whole Foods supermarket in Annapolis Town Center.
Working with fresh lump crabmeat was a treat since I’m always so aware of the cost of ingredients in my dishes. It was very luxurious! In addition to the crab and asparagus quiche, I used crabmeat in a frittata recipe in which the base was eggs (of course) and also ramen noodles. Kinda’ contradictory – less than 50-cents worth of eggs, less than 25-cents worth of ramen noodles, and about 5-dollars worth of lump crabmeat! I added some diced red and green bell peppers for color and ended up with the most delicious frittata I have ever made!
I also demonstrated a garden egg burrito using all manner of diced fresh vegetables, a garden “confetti” omelet (where the vegetables were embedded in the egg so their colors showed through) and a French filled omelet with more Maryland fresh vegetables. Since Maryland produces terrific fresh sweet corn, I also made New England Johnny Cakes (egg rich cornmeal pancakes) from kernels I stripped from leftover ears of cooked corn. Using fresh Maryland spinach, I whipped up some spinach soup with a poached egg floating on top. And Maryland’s abundant apple crop inspired an omelet with fresh apples that I peeled, sliced and sauteed in butter and brown sugar, plus sharp cheddar cheese, bacon, pecans and a drizzle of maple syrup on top. Finally, I made everyone’s favorite, deviled eggs!
All in all, it took only 3 hours to prepare the nine dishes that I made on camera! What a perfect example of the ease and speed of cooking with eggs. The fact that all of the dishes were filmed without having to go back and fix anything further attests to eggs’ user-friendliness. I LOVE EGGS! Period. As if you didn’t know.
The video demos will be featured on the CBS radio “What’s For Dinner” website from now through September: Be sure to check ‘em out at: http://whatsfordinner.vertasource.com!
A couple weeks ago I personally visited the test kitchen staffs of three women’s magazines: Woman’s Day, Family Circle and Everyday with Rachael Ray. The reason was because the magazines are already thinking about their January issues and that means diets and/or breakfast. Diets are a January consideration in an attempt by the magazines to sustain America’s favorite New Year’s resolution, losing weight. Breakfast is a consideration for no particular reason other than the fact that historically, January has been breakfast month on magazine food pages even though no “Official Breakfast Month” exists.
One of the most pleasant aspects of my job with the American Egg Board is keeping eggs top-of-mind with the press in New York. That’s because women’s and food magazines are where many families go for new recipe ideas. The three magazines I chose to visit have the highest circulations, though I stay in constant touch with more than 30 editors to make certain that they never forget to include eggs in their recipe plans! What makes it so pleasant is that these people — and those who man their test kitchens — are so food savvy that there’s never a lull in any conversation with them.
The conversation I was bent on having during my recent meetings was about a recent body of research showing that eggs have such a high satiety (i.e. fullness) value that people who eat them for breakfast end up eating less during the rest of the day, helping them stay energized and lose weight. “Eureka!” I thought. This covers both January food page considerations at one time: breakfast and weight loss!
Everyone knows that eggs are so rich in nutrients that they can help ward off things like macular degeneration in older folks (thanks to their lutein and zeaxanthin) and help brain development in infants during pregnancy (thanks to choline), never mind they contain such high-quality protein, are so very versatile and so economical to boot. Whew.
And if that’s not enough, we know that their satiety value (how much they satisfy the appetite) is great enough to allow for less food consumption throughout the day. That translates to eggs having all of the right things going for it and helping you keep your New Years resolution to eat right and eat less. It’s America’s favorite New Years resolution, you know.
Here’s one of my favorite quick and easy egg breakfast recipes from the American Egg Board’s new recipe section. In fact, there are a ton of delicious new recipes there – please check it out!
What You Need
½ cup shredded Mexican cheese blend
2 whole wheat OR flour tortillas (7-inch)
4 slices Canadian-style bacon
4 EGGS, beaten
Salsa
Here’s How SPRINKLE 1/4 cup cheese on one side of each tortilla. TOP each with 2 bacon slices.
COAT large nonstick skillet with cooking spray; heat over medium heat until hot.
POUR IN eggs. As eggs begin to set, GENTLY PULL the eggs across the pan with an inverted turner, forming large soft curds. CONTINUE cooking - pulling, lifting and folding eggs - until thickened and no visible liquid egg remains. Do not stir constantly.
SPOON eggs on top of bacon, dividing evenly. FOLD tortillas over filling to cover, pressing gently.
CLEAN skillet. COAT with cooking spray; heat over medium-low heat until hot. TOAST quesadillas just until cheese is melted, about 1 to 2 minutes per side. CUT into wedges; serve with salsa.
In a recent post I talked about hosting my food editor friends for 4 days at New York’s most popular restaurant (according to Zagat), Gramercy Tavern. The restaurant is part of the Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), which includes five more of the city’s most acclaimed restaurants. Danny Meyer, owner of USHG and an acclaimed NYC restaurateur, launched a program among his six restaurants to raise money for City Harvest, an organization that delivers food to those in need.
Danny has challenged the chefs in each of his restaurants to create a winning dish with eggs as the star ingredient. He chose eggs because they are the universal symbol of spring – rebirth, renewal and hope. And, they’re of course delicious. For each of these egg dishes served in the restaurants thru June 20th, USHG will donate $2 to City Harvest. Here’s what the chefs came up with:
Gramercy Tavern: Chef Mike Anthony
Egg crepe with grilled ramps and crab ($12)
Union Square Café: Chef Carmen Quagliata
Tagliatelle with sunnyside up egg and greenmarket vegetables ($15)
Eleven Madison Park: Chef Daniel Humm
Slow poached egg with green asparagus and Parmigiano Reggiano ($16)
Tabla: Chef Floyd Cardoz
Sunnyside spiced-up egg with arugula, bacon & black pepper-ginger chicken livers ($13)
Blue Smoke: Chef Ken Callaghan
Fried egg and pea shoot salad with candied bacon and pickled ramps ($12.95)
The Modern Bar Room: Chef Gabriel Kreuther
Slow poached egg “in a jar” with Maine lobster, sunchokes & sea urchin broth ($20)
I’m well acquainted with the creativity of Chef Mike Anthony at Gramercy Tavern where eggs are concerned. When I had my food editor friends there, I asked him to create an egg-based amuse-bouche to start each of the 4 days of lunches there. An amuse-bouche is a single bite-size hors d’oeuvre different from an appetizer in that it is served as an “excitement of the taste buds” in a single bite. Here’s what the chef came up with:
Day 1 – Celery root custard. It was the smoothest and silkiest custard I’d ever tasted. Everyone at the table agreed! The custard was flavored with celery root and had bits of it incorporated into each luxurious spoonful. “Heavenly” was the word most of the guests used.
Day 2 – Tomago-yaki with fried oyster on top. A Tomago Roll is like a Japanese crepe flavored with sake and traditionally served rolled around nari (seaweed) paper. I demonstrate an Americanized version of it when I do my omelet demonstrations. This Tomago Roll was thicker than usual and the flavor complimented the fried oyster it was served with.
Day 3 – An egg-rich crepe stuffed with smoked haddock salad that was so delicate it was close to just eating the smoky flavored aroma that surrounded it. Loved it!
Day 4 – Ham, egg and cheddar on brioche, which is a French bread very rich in eggs. This was as delicious as ham, egg and cheddar cheese gets.
I learned from watching the television program “Top Chef” that an amuse-bouche must be designed to be eaten in one mouthful. I think you can tell from the photos that these “amuses” were a bit oversized. The better to savor them, if you ask me.
Tip o’ the hat to Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group for his creativity and generosity
What an honor to be invited by the White House to participate in this year’s Easter Egg Roll. I was invited because Mrs. Obama gave a theme to the event this year, “Let’s Go Play,” which involved healthy eating for kids. And you gotta include eggs in that! And to that end, chefs were invited to give cooking demonstrations at the “KID’S KITCHEN.” The stage was set up on the grounds with the White House as the backdrop and was complete with an overhead mirror that made what the chefs were doing visible to kids who sat at tables directly below. There was even a prep tent for the chefs to organize and prepare the ingredients for their demos. Of course, the ingredients were all healthful foods, for dishes that kids might put together at home themselves. Well, older kids might. Except for my omelets.
Without a doubt, my omelet demos conveyed kid-friendly ease of preparation. And they included veggies that – along with the eggs – delivered dynamite nutrition. I invited two youngsters to participate in both of the omelet demos I gave. And participate they did. I showed them the technique and then turned the frying pan over to both of them to make an omelet by themselves from start to finish.
For my first demo I had a 9-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl, both of whom turned out omelets so beautiful that the audience and a couple of the White House chefs who were there couldn’t believe it. Honest! My second demo starred a very precocious 6-year-old boy who wanted to take over the show. I had to rein him in! His partner was a more subdued 7-year-old girl. Again, after I showed them how, both of them made omelets so surprisingly beautiful that I couldn’t believe it. During that demo there was a photographer from the Washington Post taking zillions of pictures that I hope get published because with the kids making the omelets it was all cuter than cute.
By the way, the omelets were filled with low-fat cheese, diced tomatoes, mushrooms and fat-free ham, plus chopped parsley for color. Low-fat, low-cal, and lots of flavor and nutrition.
Though my programs were scheduled for the afternoon, my colleague Elizabeth and I arrived at the White House lawn at 7 am to take it all in and speak with media. That was a new experience for me. An entire section of the lawn was set aside for television networks and local stations and their crews to report on the event. Armed with my omelet pan and spatula, I was able to land three interviews!
It helps to be a Guinness Book record holder. Everyone finds that quirky.
A highlight of the day was showing up at the book reading section of the lawn where the president, first lady and their daughters showed up to read stories to a group of children. I wasn’t able to make contact, of course, but it was very thrilling to be within 20 feet or so of the first family. I took pictures until my camera battery died.
HAPPY EASTER, EVERYONE! Over the past few weeks, I have been telling anyone who would listen how to celebrate Easter with eggs – on TV, radio and in newspapers. Mostly, I told people the proper way to hard-cook eggs. Did you know that 7 out of 10 moms don’t know the right way to hard-cook their Easter eggs? When I offered up this information, the general response was “huh?” Everyone’s been “hard boiling” their eggs because that’s what the phrase that’s been used forever says. Boil ‘em? WRONG.
Twenty-one radio shows asked for me to educate their listeners on the proper way to hard cook eggs (see below). They also wanted to talk about how to use eggs after Easter, especially since – and I’m sure you know this – the week after Easter is NATIONAL EGG SALAD WEEK! All of the radio interviews were lots of fun and I had a great time!
But I shined the brightest in Chicago. On the hugely popular “Dean Richards Show,” on WGN Radio, I was scheduled for a10-minute interview, but one topic led to another and before we both knew it, I was on the air with Dean for 45 minutes! (Including some commercial breaks but who’s counting?) I had listeners calling in with questions about eggs in general, my Guinness omelet record, my favorite uses for hard-cooked eggs, and light and funny exchanges about my career with eggs. I loved it! I hate to boast, but the show’s host, Dean Richards, said that my interview was one of the most fun interviews he had ever conducted! Meanwhile, I had calls from two of my Chicago friends who were fans of the show to tell me that it was more like “The Howard Helmer Show.” But don’t tell Dean because I wanna go back.
As if that wasn’t enough, I taped a segment with the nationally syndicated “Mike and Juliet” morning television show. The show has a wide audience reach and is aired on the local Fox station in most markets. I embarked in an omelet cook-off against Pete, who works at the show but was a chef in the army before his television days. After I showed Mike and his viewers the technique I’d be using, the race was on. Pete and I used the same brand of pans, ladles, spatulas, etc. to keep it fair. Mike was the referee. There was a countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, GO! and off we went. Twenty three seconds later I turned my omelet out onto a plate and was declared winner of the race while the live studio audience (all wearing yellow American Egg Board aprons!) cheered. Pete, the good sport that he is, shook my hand and acknowledged that I was the clear “Omelet King”! You can watch the segment HERE!
In addition to “Mike and Juliet,” a segment I taped some time ago for Mr. Food aired across the country last week, showing everyone how to make hard-cooked eggs. That’s here for your viewing pleasure: Mr. Food!
All in all, I loved all of the media attention I got. Even more important, I was so happy that so many more people would be hard-cooking their eggs, rather than hard-boiling, from this point forward!
HERE’S THE PROPER METHOD TO HARD-COOK EGGS:
Place the eggs in a saucepan in a single layer and cover them with about an inch of water. Bring the water to just where it starts to boil, then take the pan off the heat and put a tight fitting lid on it. Set a timer for 15-minutes. When the timer goes off, plunge the eggs into cold running water to stop the cooking and to cool them down. Then peel away. Or, you can save the hard cooked eggs in their shells in the refrigerator for up to a week and enjoy them whenever you like.
One of my responsibilities with the American Egg Board is to meet with food editors of national women’s and culinary magazines in New York. I keep them updated on all of the great things happening within the egg world, with hopes of them wanting to write about eggs or feature egg recipes in their pages. I have about 30 editors on my “media list” that I keep in touch with on an on-going basis.
Every year I invite the Egg Board’s director of communications to join me in taking as many of these editors to lunch as we can squeeze into a single week. The purpose is to thank them for all of the times they featured eggs on their food pages over the past year. I have the fun privilege of selecting a restaurant that I think everyone will love! This year, I chose Gramercy Tavern, Zagat Restaurant Guide’s top New York Restaurant year after year. It was a good choice. Everyone loved it.
A few weeks ago, from Tuesday thru Friday, we hosted seven editors each day at lunch. It was wonderful. The editors, all of whom are friends and colleagues with one another, welcomed a chance to break away from their test kitchens, computers, emails and cell phones and be able to chat amongst themselves. Because there are more editors than there were seats at our luncheon tables, some of the editors met up with us at breakfast or at dinner. For breakfast, we met at Landmarc restaurant in the Time-Warner center where they serve eggs poached in red wine. For dinner, it was Food Network’s Bobby Flay’s midtown restaurant Bar Americain.
In addition to me and Kristin Livermore (the Egg Board’s director of communications), here’s who was at our luncheon tables during the week of March 10th thru the 13th:
Tuesday the 10th: Tina Ujlaki from Food & Wine – Allie Lewis Clapp from Real Simple – Salma Abdelnour from O Oprah – Fran Carpentier from Parade – Freya Berg from Kraft Friends and Family – Barbara Chernitz from Redbook.
Wednesday the 11th : Beth Lipton from All You – Marge Perry from Better Homes & Gardens – David Bonom from Cooking Light – Jackie Plant from Woman’s Day – Julie Miltenberger from Family Circle – Tracy Seaman from Everyday with Rachael Ray.
Thursday the 12th: Sara Moulton from Gourmet –Cheryl Slokum from Country Living – Teri Tsang from Everyday with Rachael Ray – Bret Thorn from Nation’s Restaurant News – Tara Bench and Vanessa Seder from Ladies Home Journal.
Friday the 13th: Carol Prager from WeightWatchers, Judith Hill from Prevention, Susan Westmoreland from Good Housekeeping, Diane Hodges from True Story, Regina Ragone from Family Circle, Kate Slate from Hallmark, Chris Koury from Woman’s World.
A friend and colleague of mine, Allison Madell, recently wrote a blog post about putting an egg on top of food for her family to give it a different (and nutritious) spin. That reminded me that in the January issue of Bon Appetit magazine, their annually proclaimed “Food of the Year” for 2008 was “Anything with an egg on top”! Remembering this prompted me to search through other culinary and women’s magazines for eggs-on-top recipes in their food pages. Because I scan all magazines with food pages (about 30 of them) for the different ways eggs are being used as part of my job with the American Egg Board, it was easy enough to pull all these recipes. I limited my search to a 4-month period – November 2008 thru February 2009. I found that an egg-on-top-of-something turned-up 14 times in that short period! Those “somethings” included:
o Pizza with an egg on top
o Pasta Carbonara
o Cold frisse salads, a beef salad, and an Asian mushroom salad, all with an egg on top
o An egg on top of hashes including beef hash, salmon hash, turkey hash, sausage and potato hash, and kale hash
o Biscuits with ham and sausage with an egg on top
o Sausage gravy with an egg on top
o Everything “Benedict” had an egg on top, including traditional ham and less traditional smoked salmon
o A bowl of Japanese buckwheat noodles with an egg on top
Of course, these were only a few of the many dishes from around the world that place an egg on top. The Japanese sukiyaki (a stew) dish is served with a raw egg on top and the Korean Bimbimbop is a rice dish served with a raw egg on top. Eggs on top of dishes in France are called ala chervil, and in central Europe, ala Holstein, both terms meaning “on horseback.” A croque madame is an egg-batter-dipped grilled ham and gruyere cheese sandwich served with an egg on top and the traditional steak tartare is served with a raw egg broken on top and mixed into the meat. Warning: for food safety reasons the American Egg Board discourages eating raw eggs in any way.
Did I forget anything? Oops…yes I did! The Italians serve a spinach soup topped with Parmesan cheese and a poached egg on top. I make that myself. The recipe is oh so easy and the dish –when you serve it – is oh so glamorous. Here’s my own recipe for it:
Spinach Soup with a Poached Egg On Top (4 servings)
2 14-1/2-oz. can of chicken broth (low-sodium is okay)
1 9-oz. package of frozen chopped spinach, microwaved per package directions
4 poached eggs
4 heaping tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese
Heat the chicken broth until it simmers gently
Meanwhile, be poaching 4 eggs making certain you stop the poaching while the yolks are still runny
Stir the chopped spinach into the broth.
Ladle the broth with spinach into bowls and top each with a poached egg
Sprinkle a generous tablespoon of Parmesan cheese over all of it and serve
(What could be easier for something so delicious?)
This is just a quickie blog to recommend IHOP’s new limited time all-day menu offering of “extreme” hash browns, eggs and pancakes. Two eggs are served anyway you like alongside two pancakes. The hash browns, especially, are amazing!
These hash browns are the chunk potato kind (vs. the shredded potato kind) and what makes them so exceptional is their innovative toppings. I had my hash browns topped with melted Swiss cheese, freshly sautéed mushrooms, sliced green onions and diced ham. They were deeelicious! My friend had his topped with melted Cheddar and Jack cheeses, bacon, sliced green onions and sour cream. He loved it. They also offer sausage and country gravy hash browns.
We both ordered our eggs over-easy and the hash browns made them taste better than ever (if that’s possible). The egg yolks spilled into the potatoes and with all of the toppings I could’ve eaten it all with a spoon! The pancakes, happily, were on a separate plate so as not to interfere.
Here’s the kicker – in my New York area market this meal is $6.99 complete.
I’m inspired. I’ll never again serve plain hash browns with my eggs at home since glamorizing them is so easy!
Instead, it’s all about walleye. You gotta’ live in the upper Midwest to know about walleye. It’s a fish. It’s not exotic or particularly strong flavored, but I’d rather eat walleye than any other fish because I grew up with it in Chicago. Unfortunately, once you leave the upper Midwest, walleye isn’t around at all. That’s because there’s not a whole lot of it, and what there is of it is all consumed locally around the Great Lakes where it’s caught.
I was recently treated to some amazing walleye during a trip to Champlin Park High School just outside of Minneapolis, where I presented my egg and omelet show to the students at the school’s culinary program. The students are all well-acquainted with me since my instructional video is the centerpiece of the egg curriculum…and they greet me like a rock star whenever I arrive! The program is headed by Chef Chris Sturze, who kindly asked me to have dinner with him and 14 other food and nutrition instructors and their spouses. “Can we pleeeeeze go for walleye?” I begged.
I was taken to the walleye epicenter of the world! The Tavern on Grand in St. Paul is so famous for walleye that it’s nearly all that’s on the menu! In June of 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev visited the Twin Cities he was taken there for a taste of the Great Lakes’ favorite commodity. I doubt that he enjoyed his walleye more than I enjoyed mine! They prepare their walleye fillets all sorts of ways: pan fried almondine, grilled, battered and fried, Cajun style, blackened, in a sandwich, topped with curry salsa and even as an appetizer in a basket of Buffalo- spiced walleye pieces. Luckily, there were so many of us we were able to order the fish all of the different ways. These were food people. Everyone had to taste everything.
My selection was a plate with two fillets, one battered and fried and the other grilled. They were served with steamed chunks of rutabagas, carrots and onions. I also ordered potato cakes which were seasoned mashed potatoes shaped into pancake-like patties and grilled until crusty. Mmmm. Well, I ate walleye ‘till I cried “uncle!” I had a walleye fix that will surely last me this whole year until I return to Minneapolis/St. Paul once again. Now, I know I probably should have written about eggs, but they just weren’t invited to this party!
At Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine it took 120 of them! I recently visited the magazine to do a photo-shoot for an article that the magazine is running about me and my love for eggs. For the shoot, the test kitchen set aside 10 dozen eggs (120 eggs) to capture a total of 3 photos: one of me making an omelet, one of me flipping an omelet into the air, and one of me simply cracking eggs into a bowl.
Before I arrived, the food department at the magazine asked me for my favorite “go-to” recipe. Rather than a formal recipe, they were looking for more of a “concoction” of ingredients that you have on-hand at the moment you need to feed people. I guess you’d call it a formula more than a recipe. You’d think that in my case it’d be an omelet, but it’s not. It’s a quiche! I call it – appropriately – “sudden quiche” because it comes together so quickly and no two are ever the same! You may remember this favorite recipe of mine as I have written about it here before!
The “formula” uses a combination of 6 eggs, a cup of milk or half & half, a cup of any kind of shredded cheese and up to two cups of anything in the fridge or freezer mixed together. The whole thing is poured into and baked in a frozen deep dish pie shell, which I always keep in the freezer for a main dish in a pinch. This weekend I made one with leftover chicken ala king. I also always keep a package of frozen creamed spinach in my freezer in case I need it suddenly for a “sudden quiche” occasion.
Back to my photo shoot… most of the eggs were used for a photo of me cracking eggs into a bowl (one-handedly, of course). The photographer was determined to catch one of the yolks as gravity grabbed it mid-air. Not an easy thing to do. Not easy for me, either. But you think that’s hard? Try flipping an omelet into the air with an eye on the camera, one on the fry pan it’s supposed to land in, and smile all the while. It took hours before the photographer finally said “that’s a wrap!” but I had the best time!
My “sudden quiche” will appear in the May issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray magazine. How appropriate because May is officially national Egg Month. Be sure to check out the May issue, but until then…here’s the recipe!
SUDDEN QUICHE
6 Eggs, salted and peppered
1 Frozen deep-dish pie shell (or a sheet of refrigerated pie crust in a 9-in pie shell)
1 Cup of half & half or whole milk (or 2% milk, which is lower in fat but of course not as good)
2 Cups of anything in your fridge that seems like it’ll work
1 Cup of shredded any kind of cheese
Preheat oven to 425-F. Pierce the pie crust all over with a fork. Bake, unfilled, for about 8-minutes. Meanwhile, mix together the eggs, half & half or milk, cheese and anything else and empty it all into the pre-baked pie shell. Reduce the oven to 325-F and bake for 35 or 40 minutes. Let it rest for 5-minutes before serving.
