Eggs

Eggs take their place at the dinner table: an article from the New York Times. They are not traditionally a dinner food, but with some creative though and inspiration from elsewhere we can have a crack (har har) at eggs poached in red wine, or hard-boiled eggs in a tomatoish stew.

Ah, eggs.

I am especially lucky, because I recieve near-daily deliveries of super-fresh (more often than not they were under the chook yesterday), super-natural organic giant eggs. My father has chooks in his back yard and they live on a diet of freshly shelled prawn skins, vegetable offcuts, home-made shell grit, grains, sunshine and grass. A more spoiled chook you never would see.

We originally did name the chooks, but since then the only name we can remember is Fifi the Chinese silkie. The rest of them have become Big Brown, Little Brown, Old Red, Blackie, and so on.
Their eggs are huge, satiny and come with bright orange, firm yolks. My favourite weekend breakfast at the moment is to poach a couple of them and sit them on rye toast with a handful of baby spinach leaves or blanched asparagus on the side. Gold.

The other thing these eggs are good for is whipping up into pavlovas. The whites whip up in half the time of a supermarket egg and hold their shape like a dream.

I like making frittatas when I have a surplus of eggs. I usually use herbs, cooked sliced potato, maybe some spinach, tomato flesh, and maybe some ham if I have some. The frittata is also good if you sprinkle some cheese over the top. I can't manage the whole flipping-it-with-a-plate thing, so I usually just pour the lot into my small deep-sided cast iron frying pan and stick it in the oven. It puffs up and becomes a beautiful golden brown, and there's no worries about lifting it and breaking it.

I also like sliced hard-boiled eggs in a salad, whether nicoise or not. They are fabulous with lettuce, capers and vinaigrette.