Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Category Archives: Eggs

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Bread loaf 2

Cheese + Flour + Yeast + Salt + Eggs = The Ancient Mystery of Bread

March 22, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To contemplate bread even more, please go my previous post, Panis Gravis, or, Bread, Endless Nurturer. I’ve baked bread for years and years. In fact, except for the odd hamburger bun, my family never eats “boughten bread,” as my mother-in-law called it. In a time when “carbohydrate” evokes images reminiscent of horror films, singing the merits of bread may seem like advocating for the return of feudalism. But, in spite of all the denial of bread as a food in […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cheese, Cooking, Eggs, Photography, Russia • Tags: Acharuli khachapuri, Baking, Bread, Celiac Disease, Demeter, Gluten intolerance, M. F. K., Persephone, Republic of Georgia

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Still life 2

Another Holy Trinity of the Kitchen: The Magic of Milk, Eggs, and White Flour

September 21, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Every time I pour crêpe batter into my 8-inch Teflon*-lined crêpe pan, I see deep scratches, the ones that Habiba made with the fork she used while cooking a three-egg cheese-and-herb omelet one wintry Moroccan morning. The scratches don’t affect the pan’s performance, just as wounds and scars don’t fundamentally change who we are and how we function in the world. Pots and pans, like sugar-burned hands and fingers cut by dull knives, bear pale scars. These blemishes remind me […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cattle, Cooking, Eggs, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Milk, Morocco, Photography, Techniques • Tags: Crêpes, Eggs, Flour, France, French Cooking, Meditations, Milk, Photography

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Eating the Wild Air …

April 4, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

From the first gasping breath, when tiny hands claw at air, reaching futilely for an anchor, a rope, air feeds us. Even  fish of seas and lakes and rivers seek that building block of air — oxygen. Fire roars when coddled by oxygen and whimpers like a teat-deprived newborn lamb in its absence. Steam, the child of fire and water, births bread and soufflés, and yet sometimes bites the hand that feeds it. “Don’t play with fire, you may get […]

Categories: Cooking, Eggs, France, French Cooking, Photography, Poetry • Tags: Air, Eggs, Emily Dickinson, Food Photography, Poetry, Sabayon, Wind

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Water, the Essence of All

March 21, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Begin with a washing of hands, cleansing and purifying, before approaching the stove, as to an altar. Pouring water into a pot, do you remember the source? Rain, clouds, rivers, streams, lakes, oceans … Transformation, from elements and compounds and chaotic matter to life. Essence. Alchemy. In your hands, a cook’s hands, water shape-shifts into magical forms: liquid, gas, solid. Water … Boils, blanches, poaches, simmers, steams, freezes … Water … Becomes soup. Steam … Becomes tamales. Ice … Becomes […]

Categories: Bread, Eggs, Photography, Soup • Tags: Acquacotta, Bread, Meditations, Photography, Soup, Water

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Photo credit: Martin Deutsch

Shrovetide Pancakes — A Shrove Tuesday Tradition

February 15, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Shriven/Shrove: archaic : to confess one’s sins, especially to a priest* When they heard the “pancake bell,” people flocked to the church to be “shriven” or confessed on Shrove Tuesday, and ready to make the pancakes that date back to Saxon times. If you think of Shrove Tuesday pancakes as stodgy, thick American pancakes, think again. Meant to use up eggs, butter, and milk just before Lent, these pancakes resemble French crêpes and Italian crespelle more than the flapjacks so […]

Categories: Cooking, Eggs, English Cooking, Lent • Tags: English Cooking, Lent, Pancakes, Photo Essay, Shrove Tuesday

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Mardi Gras egg 2

Butterfly of Winter — Fabergé’s Mardi Gras Egg

February 12, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Carnival is a Butterfly of Winter whose last mad flight of Mardi Gras forever ends his glory.” ~ Perry Young, The Mistick Krewe: Chronicles of Comus and His Kin Theo Fabergé,  grandson of Carl Fabergé, created this dazzling egg to commemorate Mardi Gras in New Orleans:

Categories: Art, Eggs, Lent, Russia • Tags: Eggs, Fabergé eggs, Mardi Gras, New Orleans, Theo Fabergé

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Eggs Hot Springs

Idylls of Cuisne, #49

February 7, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Eggs, Japan, Photography • Tags: Eggs, Food Photography, Japan

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Evelyn John Cook Book

John Evelyn: Cook, Or, the 17th C. Man Who Would Be a Locavore

February 1, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Omnia explorate; meliora retinete (Explore everything; keep the best.) ~~ Evelyn family motto Somehow, and how I wish it were so, it would be nice to time-travel, to sit at table with the people I’m meeting through their words, written by long-dead hands with quill pens and India ink. One of my new “acquaintances,” if such a word be the correct way of putting things, went (goes?) by the name of John Evelyn. Seventeenth-century English author John Evelyn chronicled upper-class […]

Categories: Agriculture, Books, Cookbooks, Cooking, Desserts, Eggs, England, English Cooking, Gardens, Herbs, Local foods, Locavores, Milk, Pies--Sweet • Tags: Cheesecake, Chess Pie, Cooking, Cooks, Eggs, Eliza Smith, England, John Evelyn, John Nott, Rennet, Robert May

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Photo credit: Tracy Hunter

Idylls of Cuisine, #37

November 8, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: China, Eggs, Photography • Tags: China, Salted Fermented Eggs

Eggs hard-boiled 2

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Eggs

October 19, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

From Memoirs of the American Folk-lore Society, Volume 4, published in 1896, by the American Folklore Society, folk beliefs about Halloween from early America. Most U.S. Halloween practices came from Scotland. 311. On Halloween put an egg to roast before the fire and leave the doors and windows open. When it begins to sweat a cat will come in and turn it. After the cat will come the man you are to marry, and he will turn it. If you […]

Categories: Eggs, Halloween • Tags: All Souls' Day, Day of the Dead, Eggs, Folk Beliefs, Folklore, Halloween

Eggs devilled

Idylls of Cuisine, #34

October 18, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]* *Demon eyeballs, click on photo for recipe. Note: for the next two weeks, I’m working on a couple of intensive writing projects, so “Gherkins & Tomatoes” will of necessity be brief, with a look at “Saints, Souls, and Haints” in honor of the ancient traditions of Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day. “Haints” comes from a slang term used for “ghost” in the American South.

Categories: Eggs, Photography • Tags: Devilled Eggs, Eggs, Food Photography, Halloween

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Farm life chickens

The Chicken or the Egg? 5. To Market, To Market

October 16, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Cooks cook eggs in a plethora of ways. And vendors sell eggs in a myriad of ways. The following photo essay celebrates the ingenuity of egg vendors across the globe. Egg storage and preservation methods vary.

Categories: Eggs, Photography • Tags: Eggs, Food Photography, Markets, Open-Air Markets

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Eggs en cocotte (Photo credit: Elke Sisco)

The Chicken or the Egg? 4. Egging Us On

October 15, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A few days ago, I thumbed through the brand-new, hot-off-the-press version of Larousse Gastronomique. You know,  Julia Child’s bedtime reading.  At least according to the movie, “Julie & Julia.” After all, Julia once remarked that, “If I were allowed only one reference book in my library, Larousse Gastronomique would be it, without question.” First written in French by Prosper Montagné in 1938, it wasn’t until 1961 that English speakers could savor Larousse, edited by Charlotte Turgeon and Nina Froud. Since […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cooking, Eggs, Food News, France, French Cooking • Tags: Cookbooks, Eggs, French Cooking, Larousse Gastronomique

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Eggs organic with feather

The Chicken or the Egg? 3. Instructions to the Cook

October 14, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Eggs a guilty pleasure? There’s a reason for that. Thanks to Dr. Thomas Royle Dawber’s research team and the famous “gold standard” Framingham Study,[1] eggs morphed into things to be eaten on the sly, enjoyed alone, like a whole bag of foil-wrapped Dove chocolates. Based on the weak statistical correlation between cholesterol levels and heart disease in the original phase of that study, and the assumption that cholesterol in food automatically affected blood cholesterol, the American Heart Association and the […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Eggs, Middle East • Tags: Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchen, Cholesterol, Cooks, Eggs, Framingham Study, Nawal Nasrallah

Balt (Photo credit: Marshall Astor)

The Chicken or the Egg? 2. The Cooking of Eggs

October 13, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

There is reason in roasting of eggs! ~~~ James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides In nineteenth-century America, giddy with conquest and Manifest Destiny, domestic science denizens rose up, called themselves home economists, and jumped on the bandwagon of cleanliness and right thought. The results of that movement set the stage for today’s proscriptions and prescriptions regarding eating and cooking, especially when it came to eggs. And eggs, thankfully,  seem to have survived the greatest roll-coaster ride in […]

Categories: Cooking, Eggs, English Cooking • Tags: American Cooking, Cooks, Eggs, English Cooking

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Eggs Dali 1

The Chicken or the Egg? 1. The Egg and Art*

October 12, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The egg it is where it was at for Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, who once said, rather egotistically (!), that “When I was three I wanted to be a cook. At the age of six I wanted to be Napoleon. Since then my ambition has increased all the time” The other day, thoughts of the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989) floated into my mind, slipping and sliding like one of his weary watches. Or, better yet, […]

Categories: Art, Cookbooks, Eggs, Menus, Spain • Tags: Arno Breker, Cookbooks, Food in Art, Menus, Museums, Salvador Dali, Surrealism

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Photo credit: Jeremy Stanley

Moonshine

June 17, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Living as I do in the heart of moonshine [white lightning] country, I just about dropped the cookbook when I saw the word “Moonshine.” If it had been a Southern cookbook or a Foxfire book, I would have turned the page without a second thought and been done with it. But this reference to “Moonshine” came from English food writer Elizabeth David’s book, Summer Cooking (pages 65-66). And when my eye darted from the title of the recipe to the […]

Categories: Eggs, English Cooking, French Cooking, Southern Food • Tags: Cooks, Eggs, Elizabeth David, Moonshine, Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook

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scotch-eggs

Scottish Eggs, Anyone?

April 21, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Scotland’s been in the news a lot lately. But what do Scottish people eat? That’s the question. Tea, most likely. That’s a good place to start. Oatmeal, in scones and porridge (just for breakfast, you would hope). Yes. And whisky. Scotland produces some of the best whisky in the world. Smoky. Peaty. Can’t go wrong with whisky, no. Unless you prefer beer. Like maybe Deuchars’ Indian Pale Ale. And the salmon! My goodness, yes, from the Tay River and Tweed […]

Categories: Eggs, Recipes, Scotland • Tags: Cooking, Food, Recipes, Scotch Eggs, Scotland, Scottish Food, Susan Boyle

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Photo credit: Renato Grisa

Idylls of Cuisine #8

April 5, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph and nothing else, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Easter, Eggs, Photography • Tags: Easter, Eggs, Food, Food Photography

Photo credit: Colin Nederkoorn

Ham and Eggs

March 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Omne vivum ex ovo. “All life comes from an egg.” –Latin Proverb– Eggs and Easter go together like…ham and eggs? Well, it hasn’t always been that way. Christians first celebrated Easter in the second century A.D. and the Council of Nicaea, convened in 325 A.D. by the Emperor Constantine, set the official date for Easter. According to the English historian, the Venerable Bede (circa 672-735 A.D.), the name “Easter” originated with the name of the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, […]

Categories: Easter, Eggs, Recipes • Tags: Cooking, Easter, Eggs, Food, Food History, Recipes

The Eggs Had It: Goodbye, “Cool Hand”

September 28, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger? Paul Newman Paul Newman’s death brought up many memories of his films. Since I am a “foodie,” one scene in particular popped up in my mind. Yes, that gut-wrenching “meal” in “Cool-Hand Luke,” when Luke (Paul Newman) stuffs himself with fifty hard-cooked eggs. Ouch. Thanks, Paul of the blue eyes, for all the great films and the care you showed to the world through your food company, Newman’s Own. All […]

Categories: Eggs • Tags: Cooking, Eggs, Films, Food, Obituaries, Paul Newman

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Food forms the very essence of life, from the fruit fly to the elephant, with humans in between. So much of what we do revolves around cooking, eating, and the finding of food. Here you'll discover stories, meditations, and photographs celebrating the places that we call home. And, of course, the food that garnishes it all.

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