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…
Tag: Eggs
Eating the Wild Air …
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…
Butterfly of Winter — Fabergé’s Mardi Gras Egg
“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:
Idylls of Cuisne, #49
[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
John Evelyn: Cook, Or, the 17th C. Man Who Would Be a Locavore
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…
De-Constructing Hawaii’s Loco Moco
For those seeking examples of culinary fusion, Hawaii provides a very deep well to peer into. Rachel Laudan discovered this while teaching at the University of Hawaii and wrote an award-winning book about the subject: The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage.* One of those fusion dishes which Laudan mentions, albeit briefly, is a…
Idylls of Cuisine, #45
[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
Saints, Souls, and Haints: Eggs
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…
Idylls of Cuisine, #34
[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,…
