A Tart and Trader Joe's

It has been a momentous weekend for the Pittsburgh grocery scene. Trader Joe's has opened its doors. I'm not sure what sort of unconscious masochistic fantasy I was indulging when I decided to visit Trader Joe's on opening morning. I was curious, I suppose, not having ever lived in the vicinity of this store that seemed to make otherwise rational people go all dewy-eyed and wax poetic about Brie, mango chutney, and such stuff. And I needed to buy supplies for a small dinner party we were hosting that night. So, I downed a cup of coffee on Friday morning and headed down Penn Ave. to the Trader Joe's site.

The parking lot was swarming with cars and people lugging grocery bags, but that chaos could not possibly have prepared me for what I would find inside: A Complete Madhouse. Now, I've actually visited a madhouse before, although we were discouraged from referring to it as such. A small group of Girl Scouts, yours truly among them, were guided through the living quarters, cafeteria, and recreational areas of a North Carolina psychiatric ward sometime around 1992. Looking back on this experience from my position immediately within the front doors of Trader Joe's on opening day, I realized that mad houses come in a variety of forms, and I would have gladly chosen the quiet gray halls of Dorothea Dix over the manic aisles of this grocery store.

The moment I pushed my cart through the sliding door vestibule, I found myself in a line of grocery cart pushing patrons. This line snaked down the first aisle, curved around its end into the second aisle, and continued throughout the entire store. There was no getting out of this procession...veering from it meant going against the flow of traffic, which meant stony stares and mounting claustrophobia. When some unfortunate soul realized that he had failed to grab, say, a can of artichokes, he yelled back toward those carts still in the artichoke vicinity, and requested that a can or two be passed forward toward his cart.

As if this weren't enough to certify this environment as a madhouse, the Hawaiian shirt wearing staff stationed throughout the store, were continually asking if we were Enjoying Ourselves At Trader Joe's!!!????? Every few minutes they provided their own answer to this question when one grinning staff member would send up the call, "I Love Trader Joe's!!!!" whereupon the other staff members would join in exclaiming in unison their own Love for this jammed grocery store, and proved it with hand claps and "Woo-hoo!" shouts.

Perhaps all of this could have been bearable if I had found all the things on my shopping list. The aisles were stuffed with gourmet canned soup, pre-made cheese cakes and pesto pizzas, fancy cookies, and an array of flavored hummus dips; but lamb shanks, endive, radicchio, rutabagas, and turnips were not to be found. I had to go to Whole Foods.

So, if I were to give a review of the Pittsburgh Trader Joe's, I would have to say the following: Don't go on opening day. Do go for cheeses, crackers, smoked salmon, dips, and nuts--the kind of stuff you would want for a nice cocktail party. Don't go for meat, bread, or exotic vegetables (but since when have turnips been exotic vegetables?). Do go for sing-a-longs. Do go for olive oil, cooking broths, and maple sugar...the prices are good. I would like to say go for wine, but--damn Pennsylvania laws--I won't. Do go for blanched almonds and white peaches. Then, when you get home, make these tarts.

They are not too sweet, and have a pronounced, but not cloying, almond flavor. The crust is easy to work with. The filling is surprisingly light considering that it's made out of nuts. With a small scoop of vanilla ice cream, one of these four-inch tarts is enough for two people. Should you be serving dessert gluttons, as I happily was, do not insist they share. A single person can easily eat one of these tarts, even after a lamb shank dinner. I did.

White Peach Almond Tart
Serves 4-8 (see above paragraph). From Bon Appetit, June 1997 as "Fresh Plum Frangipane Tart." Of course, you could also make one big tart, in which case you would have to increase the baking time a bit.
Should your Trader Joe's not carry white peaches, this tart would be just as good with plums, apricots, or pears.


Almond Crust
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup slivered blanched almonds
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons (more or less) ice water

Blend flour, almonds, sugar, and salt in food processor until the almonds are finely ground. Toss in butter and pulse 4-5 times until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add almond extract and 1 tablespoon water. Mix for a few seconds, adding other 1 tablespoon water (or more) until dough forms moist clumps. Turn out clumps onto a work surface, pat them together, and knead a few times to combine. Divide dough into four pieces and flatten them into disks. Wrap them in plastic and refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours and up to 1 day.

Filling
1 cup slivered blanched almonds
1/3 cup sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon dark run
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
2 white peaches, pitted and halved

Glaze
2 tablespoons apricot jam
2 teaspoons brandy

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Roll out one disk of crust dough on a lightly floured surface into a 6 inch round. Transfer dough to a four inch tartlet pan with removable bottom. Press dough into the tart pan, making sure to press it all the way into the flutes of the pan. Trim excess. Repeat with remaining dough disks. Freeze crusts 15 minutes.

2. Place tarts pans on a baking sheet and bake them 6 minutes. Remove and pierce with a toothpick several times to keep it from ballooning. Press crust back down and up sides of pan using the bottom of a small measuring cup if necessary. Continue baking until crust is pale golden brown, about 6 minutes. Cool crusts on baking sheet 15 minutes. Keep oven at 375.

3. For filling: Blend all ingredients except peaches in a food processor until the almonds are finely ground. Spread mixture into prepared crusts, smoothing with small spatula. Place peach halves skin side up on a cutting board. Cut 1 peach half into thin parallel slices, keeping the peach intact by not slicing all the way to the end of the peach. Press the peach to fan out slices. Repeat with remaining peaches. Place fanned peaches, skin side up, on almond filling. Press them down gently to anchor them.

4. Bake tarts on baking sheet until filling is puffed up and golden and peaches are tender, 15-20 minutes. Remove tarts from baking sheet to a rack.

5. For glaze: Stir apricot jam and brandy in a heavy small saucepan over medium heat until mixture boils. Strain glaze into a small bow. Brush glaze generously over tart tops and then cool tarts completely. They can be prepared 8 hours in advance of serving and kept at room temperature.

Just in time for Halloween: a candy-coated salad

Candy has never really made my heart beat fast. Except for fireballs, which I always imagined to be little edible planets whose red-hot surfaces I licked away to their cooler pink cores, I could pretty much do without candy. I could then focus my sweet fantasies on chocolate and caramel which, to my mind, are not candy, and do indeed give me chest palpitations from time to time.

My family members, I think, share these sentiments. Upon returning home laden with Halloween booty, my brother, sisters, and I would immediately empty our plastic pumpkins onto the carpet. While my dutiful parents scanned for suspicious looking specimens--razor-filled and LSD laced Halloween candy being one of the most tenacious urban legends--we children set about dividing the chocolate wheat from the candy chaff. Hershey's kisses, and miniature Butterfingers went in one direction, while candy corn, Smarties, and suckers (unless they were filled with bubblegum or tootsie roll) went in the other. Precious full-sized candy bars (Bar None and Almond Joy among them) were swept up and jealoulsy hoarded under pillows and eaten bite by bite as long as we could stand it. This is what my well-intentioned parents got for keeping our houselhold chocolate-free. For doses of Reese's peanut butter cups, we used to go to our neighbor's house where the cabinets were stocked with sugary treats destined for the lunchboxes of my schoolmate, Cindy, and her coal miner dad.

Easter brought similar hoarding strategies to our household. And, once again, jelly beans and marshmellow chicks would grow hard and stale while we self-rationed out malted chocolate eggs and held contests to see who could keep from nibbling the ultimate easter basket treasure--the Cadbury egg--longest. Needless to say, these contests were short-lived.

When I arrived at college to find the dorm halls and libraries filled with girls carrying plastic bags of jelly-bellies and sour gummy worms, I was confused. I knew that bins full of chocolate covered pretzels and peanut M and M's sat right next to the bins from which they daily fished their gelatinous treats. Although I never managed to understand this college candy phenomenon, I did eventually develop an affinity--of which I am not proud--for buttered popcorn flavored jelly beans. Oh, the power of peer pressure.

Halloween may be behind all of this chocolate and candy talk, but the most immediate cause of this post is a little salad I recently made for a Thai style dinner. I've written before about a certain French salad that eats like a meal, and this is a salad that eats like candy. Its velvety-sweet mango and crunchy-sweet carrots tucked among watercress rival the intensity of Jolly Ranchers and Sweet Tarts. But whereas these candies tend to overwhelm one's tastebuds, coat them with sugar, and turn them some neon hue, this salad elegantly--but boldly--perks up the entire surface of the tongue. In the dressing, there is lime juice for the sour taste buds, sugar for the sweet taste buds, and fish sauce for the salty taste buds. Toasted sesame seed oil affords a savory note and rounds out the intensity of the other flavors.

Let it be known: this may be my favorite salad ever. And for the amuse-bouche qualities described above, it is the perfect first course. It was followed by scallops with ginger sauce and cilantro basmati rice, and I just believe that they would not have tasted so good if my taste buds had not been primed and ready by this techni-colored salad. For any one out there who is wary of fish sauce, I should add that there was general agreement at the table (even among such fish sauce wary people) that the dressing on this salad put its fish sauce to excellent and tasty use. All of that lime juice, I think, freshens up the pungent fish flavor that tends to raise objections.

Mango and Watercress Salad
Adapted from Gourmet, October 2003. Serves 4.


For dressing:
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
2-4 dashes hot chili sauce
fresh ground pepper to taste

For salad:
1 lb. watercress, stems discarded
1 large ripe, but firm, mango, peeled, pitted, and cut into 1/2 inch dice
2/3 cup grated carrot
1/3 cup torn fresh cilantro leaves
1/3 cup torn fresh basil leaves
1/3 cup torn fresh mint leaves

Whisk together all dressing ingredients in a small bowl. Add salt to taste.

Gently toss all salad ingredients together in a large bowl. Add enough dressing to coat. Toss, and serve immediately.

Photogenic Menu, Take Two

I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised that this food blog has decidedly influenced my culinary habits. It was originally conceived as a record of some of the meals I have cooked, supplemented with reflections about the recipes, the preparation, or the end result of these meals. But, the writing of (food) history does indeed shape (food) history itself. It seems I spent several years of graduate school fighting my way through Foucault, Barthes, and Benjamin to learn what a few months of blogging on a free website has taught me.

Here's how it happens: I'll avoid cooking well-loved meals if I've already posted them here. Sometimes I'll choose to cook a recipe because I want to write about a certain ingredient (like squid), or a certain technique (like bread-baking). I'll opt for recipes that promise photogenic results (as blended vegetable soups always do), while I'll steer clear of monochromatic gravy-like dishes even if I'm really craving beef bourguignon or chicken thighs braised in wine (although a sentimental dish has sometimes managed to make the cut). I've been known to add a little garnish to a blog-destined dish that otherwise would have been served free of such stuff. I make my reality with the report of that reality in mind. My present experience is shaped by what will have been.

Here's how technology plays its part in the construction of (food) history: Since I usually try to serve novel and attractive dishes at dinner parties, these events are good for blog posts. Yet very few photographs from the dinner party kitchen have appeared on these pages. The reason? First of all, I forget to take a picture because I am chatting away with the guests, or in a rush to get quickly-cooling food to the table. If I do remember to take a picture, I don't have the patience to take a good one. My camera, you see, leaves something to be desired in the food photography realm (namely, a new camera...for Christmas...hint, hint...anyone?). I have to take many, many photos before I feel confident that I've gotten a satisfactory one. Then, this confidence often fails me. Canon has insisted that my camera is working properly and hinted that perhaps I do not know how to take a picture. While I have not completely ruled out this possibility--the user guide is long and not terribly easy to comprehend--I prefer to fault the little machine for my photos of spotty quality than give up my dreams of an SLR digital camera.

While I've managed to capture some decent photos of food that I've prepared, I routinely relegate fuzzy pictures to a sad, but very full, file folder in my computer hard drive. The posts that never made it. Food blog limbo. Sure, I could make the photogenic dish again and be sure to get a good shot, but cooking the same thing for two different groups of guests makes me feel gloomy. There are just too many recipes out there to spend time rehashing them for one good picture.

But I did it anyway. Well, not exactly, but close enough to make me feel the need to confess. I've been doing a good bit of entertaining lately. Wining and dining guests, I've found, are good strategies for making and keeping friends. Since Patrick and I became strangers in this strange land, we've been making good use of my amenableness to cooking and his colleagues' willingness to come try what I've cooked up. I put together a menu for a recent dinner party that I was sure would please my guests and pose nicely for the blogging camera. First course: sunflower sprout and yellow roasted beet salad. Second course: shrimp cakes with chili-lime cream sauce. Dessert: caramel chocolate walnut tart. It all turned out nicely: good to look at and good to eat. I spent a minute or so in the kitchen snapping photos of each course before carrying the plates to the table. Things were going well. This meal would make a nice post on my blog. The beginnings of a few paragraphs about beets were taking shape in my head as I said goodbye to our dining companions.

It wasn't until the following afternoon that I learned of my camera's betrayal. Not a single photo turned out. Each one was blurry or dark or sliced across by a shadow. Despairing, I gave up on the whole meal. But when the following weekend offered up the chance for another dinner party, I started to think about that beet salad and those shrimp cakes again. Now, I wouldn't have done what I did if, the first time around, these dishes had proved too much a hassle for dinner party fare, or had received only lukewarm praise. But I can't deny the fact that I did it primarily for the pictures. Yes, I served beet salad and shrimp cakes to my unsuspecting guests for the pictures.

Yellow beets were not to be found, and while the red ones tasted just about as good, they weren't as nice for the pictures. I also substituted watercress for the sunflower sprouts this time around. It's hard to go wrong with a beet salad. The toasted sunflower seeds add a nice little crunch to this one, and the lemon-shallot dressing is robust enough that you don't even miss the cheese (goat, feta, ricotta salata) that usually appears with roasted beets on salad plates. Since we had eaten left-over caramel chocolate walnut tart for several days after the initial dinner party, I couldn't quite bear to make another one. And, the most recent copy of Cook's llustrated featured a recipe for chocolate pots de creme that I couldn't pass up. I've done other chocolate pots de creme and coffee pots de creme and caramel pots de creme, but, let me tell you, this recipe trumps them all: dizzying-rich chocolate flavor, smooth as velvet, and requires no water-bath baking. It's a real dinner party winner. Oh yeah, and it looks good in pictures.


Beet and Watercress Salad with Toasted Sunflower Seeds
Serves 4.


2 1/2 pounds medium beets
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot
3 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
large bunch of watercress, stemmed, washed, and dried

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Trim beets, leaving about an inch of stems attached. Wrap beets in groups of three or so in aluminum foil and roast on a baking sheet in the oven until tender, 40-45 minutes. Carefully unwrap beets and let cool just enough to handle.
3. While roasting beets, toast sunflower seeds in a small baking dish, shaking occasionally, until golden, 8-10 minutes. Watch them because they'll burn really fast.
4. Whisk together shallot, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and sugar in a small bowl, then add oil in a stream while whisking.
5. When beets are cool enough to handle, trim off stems, and slip off the skins. Cut beets into thin slices and gently toss with 3 tablespoons of the dressing in a bowl. Dressed beets can be covered and refrigerated 1 day ahead.
6. Toss watercress in remaining dressing in another bowl. Arrange beets on plates, top with watercress, and sprinkle with sunflower seeds. Add a few twists of ground pepper.

Shrimp Cakes with Chili-Lime Cream Sauce
adapted from Bon Appetit September 2005, original recipe from Sansei Seafood restaurant and Sushi Bar, Maui.
Serves 4 as main course.


1 pound uncooked shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 large egg
2 scallions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
1/2 teaspoon chili-garlic sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few grindings fresh pepper
2 cups panko, divided (Japanese breadcrumbs)
2 tablespoons peanut oil
Chili-Lime Cream sauce (recipe follows)
chopped scallions for garnish

1. Chop up shrimp into very small pieces. The original recipe called for the use of a food processor, but I think that this would make the shrimp too finely chopped. You want your cakes to have small chunk of shrimp in them. I find that putting the shrimp in a bowl and then running through them with a pair of kitchen shears works best for me. Put chopped shrimp in medium bowl. Add egg, green onion, lemon juice, mustard, cilantro, hot pepper sauce, salt, and pepper. Mix. Then, stir in 1 cup of the panko.
2. Form mixture into 8 cakes. They will be about three inches in diameter. Roll cakes in remaining one cup of panko. Transfer them to a wax-paper-lined baking sheet. Refrigerate for 10 minutes. You can do this up to four hours ahead.
3. Heat 2 tablespoons peanut oil in a heavy large skillet over medium heat. Fry cakes until cooked through and golden brown on both sides, about 6 minutes.
4. Divide Chili-Lime Cream Sauce among 4 plates. Place 2 shrimp cakes on each, garnish with chopped scallions, and serve.

Chili-Lime Cream Sauce
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon chopped peeled fresh ginger
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1/3 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons chili-garlic sauce
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, and cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Combine first 4 ingredients in a heavy small saucepan. Boil over high heat until reduced by half, 3-5 minutes. Add cream and boil until reduced by half, about 2 minutes. Reduce heat to low. Mix in chili-garlic sauce. Add butter one piece at a time, whisking just until melted before adding next piece.


Chocolate Pots de Creme
Serves 6. From Cook's Illustrated, November and December 2006


8 ounces 70 percent bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
5 large egg yolks
5 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup half-and-half
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon instant espresso mixed with 1 tablespoon water

Whipped Cream and Cocoa Powder

1. Place chocolate in medium heat-proof bowl. Set a fine-mesh strainer over bowl and set aside.
2. Whisk yolks, sugar, and salt in a bowl until combined; then whisk in cream and half-and-half. Pour mixture into a medium saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, and scraping bottom of pot with wooden spoon until thickened. When the custard clings to the back of your spoon and registers a temperature of 175 to 180 degrees, it's done. This will take 8-12 minutes. Do not let the custard come to a simmer.
3. Pour custard through mesh strainer over chocolate. Let mixture stand to melt for about 5 minutes. Whisk until smooth, whisk in vanilla and espresso. Divide mixture among 6 ramekins. Gently tap ramekins against the counter to remove air bubbles.
4. Cool pots de creme to room temperature, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until chilled, at least 4 hours or up to 72 hours. Before serving, let pots de creme stand at room temperature for 20-30 minutes.
5. Top each ramekin with a bit of whipped cream (I added just a bit of sugar and vanilla to mine), and dust with cocoa powder.

Zucchini Trilogy, Part III

Blushing tree leaves and the arrival of bone-chilling gusts of wind have me looking forward to beef stews, pumpkin pie and spaghetti carbonara (among other cool weather fare). But they also have me looking back, wondering where the summer went, wishing I had eaten more tomatoes when they were a dollar a dozen, thinking I wore my swim suit entirely too few times, and devising ways to use those last few summer ingredients that are still cheap and readily available in grocery store aisles. Zucchini once again caught my eye.

Zucchini would not likely win a summer vegetable popularity test. Though green and fresh looking, they can't just be bitten into with a sprinkling of salt like a red pepper, hothouse tomato, or cucumber. What, exactly, does zucchini qua zucchini taste like? Cool, slightly watery, dense...that's about all that comes to mind. Zucchini is not the type of vegetable to win awards in the leading role category. Alone, it seems meek and lackluster. But in the supporting role category, it may be the most talented of all vegetables, somehow deepening and freshening the flavors of other ingredients without stealing the show.

Take, for example, zucchini bread. Countless children have been tricked into eating significant amounts of shredded zucchini under the guise of cakey slices of bread. They don't taste it. Even though I know it's there, playing its part to mellow out the cinnamon, to moisten the crumb, and to contribute vitamins and minerals to my breakfast treat, I don't really taste it.

The flavor of zucchini is even elusive in recipes that overtly feature it. This zucchini soup is the third zucchini installment to appear here, and, although I'm still having trouble translating its flavor into words, it comes the closest to the essence of zucchini I've managed thus far. Although my zucchini fritters were almost entirely made up of zucchini, I think that the fritter texture--crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside-- steals the spotlight over the taste of the zucchini. Stuffed zucchini blossoms are delicious alright, but filled with hot cheese and coated in fried batter, the essence of zucchini they certainly are not.

This soup contains a fair amount of rosemary, but the herb manages to play up the flavor of the zucchini instead of overshadow it. I used chicken broth in this version, but I suppose that using water instead would render a more "clean" flavor. With every spoonful, I felt as though I were just about to put into words the essence of zucchini, but, in the end, I'm still at a loss. I do know that this soup will become a late summer staple, and anyone with a backyard garden overrun with giant zucchini is welcome to unload some of it in my kitchen. Just be sure you make a big batch of this soup first. And then write me and tell me what it tastes like.

Zucchini and Rosemary Soup
adapted from a 1995 Bon Appetit recipe (from the Inn at Perry Cabin, St. Michaels, Maryland). Serves 6-8.


2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
3 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary
6 cups chicken broth
2 russet potatoes, peeled and sliced
4 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
Chopped green onions

1. Put butter and oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, and saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and rosemary. Add stock and potato. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Add sliced zucchini and simmer for about 15.

2. Puree with an immersion blender, or, poor soul, in batches with a stand blender. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle soup into bowls. Top with green onions.

The Salubrious Salad that Eats like a Meal

Sometime between 9 and 10 o'clock on Saturday night, a headache and increasing wooziness forced me to face up to it: I had caught the bug. Since I am usually unaffected by whatever sniffling thing is going around, and since Patrick had already made it through the sore throat, fever, and stuffy nose phases of the current manifestation and moved squarely into the lingering cough phase, I thought I was home free. But this bug apparently likes to lay low for awhile and then get you when you happen to be far from home and wearing a formal dress that is a bit to restrictive in the rib cage area.

I moped for two days through the sore throat phase, not feeling up to making progress on the dissertation. Instead, I wandered feverishly through the house, wondering in a bored way what sort of thing I could ingest to mix with the pile of DayQuil and vitamins sitting in the bottom of my stomach. That well-tried sick food, chicken soup, required knife work and handling raw meat, neither of which I felt I could muster. The sore-throated husband had recovered on a diet of orange juice, ginger ale, and chocolate icecream with chocolate syrup, the thought of which made my stomach feel gurgly. I found my sore throat steering me away from easy to swallow, soothing liquids and frozen treats toward what, in the end, should have come as no surprise: hot and salty carbohydrates--my comfort food in sickness and in health.

A few days of stovetop popcorn and buttered noodles carried me over into the stuffy nose phase, which, I am happy to report, is a great improvement over its predecessor. Suddenly, I needed greens and protein and lots of it. It turns out I needed a plate of salad slick with bacon grease and runny egg yolk, a healthy dinner turned cholesterol feast in that classic French way: salade frisee aux lardons. With a soft poached egg on top and a garlic rubbed slice of toast on the side, this is the salad that eats like a meal.

Sitting down to this salad gave me the dual sensation of being transported to a farmhouse table somewhere in the French countryside and to an upscale cafe on a Paris street. In the end, though, I was perfectly happy to be seated at a table with a couple of Americans recovering from the flu in Pittsburgh, PA.

Do not be fooled by the simple ingredients. Thrown together they somehow add up to much more than their individual flavors. The hardiness of the frisee stands up to the bacon grease, but its bitterness mellows out in the salty-sweet fat. Shallots lend a depth to the dressing while lemon juice cuts the grease. When the egg yolk oozes out over it all, you realize that salad greens in this country, seldom paired with eggs (and only then the spongy hard-boiled type), have been done a great disservice.

On the matter of poaching eggs:

This was my first time. The results were pretty good, and I have given the technique that I used in the recipe below. But if you type "How to Poach an Egg" into a Google search box, you'll discover an astounding number of hits, some of which I plan to try in the future. A link on a certain handy blog will lead you to the results of a thorough experiment in poaching techniques. Unfortunately the winning method does not appear to have worked for the writer of said handy blog, but she has posted her own technique suggestions here.


In addition to these "How to" guides, you'll find various rants and pleas written by people who have been systematically failed by poached eggs. Even the supremely talented cook of the food blog, Chocolate and Zucchini, (who lives in France, by the way) turned to her own readers for help after several disasters. I imagine that the massive amounts of contradictory advice she received contributed to further desperation rather than enlightenment.

Today's oh so timely food section of the New York Times offered some tips for poaching eggs. As usual, "The Minimalist" made it seem so easy. He shows how to poach an egg in red wine, and gives several recipes for dishes featuring runny eggs.


Frisee Salad with Bacon and Poached Egg
From Gourmet, February 1999, adapted for my household vinegar hater. You can substitute red wine vinegar for the lemon juice if you have no such constraint to observe. Serves 4.

1/2 pound frisee, torn into bite-size pieces
6 ounces thick cut bacon slices, cut crosswise into 1/4 inch pieces
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
4 extra-large eggs
2 tablespoons chopped shallots
3 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
salt and pepper

1. Cook bacon in skillet over medium heat, stirring every now and then, until golden. Remove skillet from heat.

2. While cooking bacon, fill a serving bowl with the frisee. Fill another skillet with 1 inch warm water. Fill another saucepan (a wide one if you have one) with water and stir in white vinegar. Bring liquid to a bare simmer. Break each egg into a teacup. Slide one egg at a time into simmering liquid and push the white around the yolk with a spoon, moving the egg gently. With luck, your egg will rise to the surface, take on an oval shape, and the yolk will be surrounded by the whites. Cover saucepan and remove from heat. Leave them to set for about 3 minutes if you like them runny, or about 5 minutes if you don't. With a slotted spoon, transfer eggs to the skillet of warm water.

3. Reheat bacon in its skillet over medium heat. Add shallot and cook for about 1 minute. Add lemon juice and boil for a few seconds. Immediately pour the hot dressing over frisee and toss. Salt and pepper to taste.