The noblest of emulsions

Tie-dye Easter eggs by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This is my contribution to April's #LetsLunch Twitter Party on the theme of eggs. I got a bit mixed up in the Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg riddle, but there are eggs in here if you have the patience to read it.

When I last wrote about mayonnaise, I described a fish stew with red pepper aioli and my husband's Proustian childhood treat ~ pound cake slices spread with mayonnaise and pan-fried. At the time, my new foodie friend Pedro commented "mayonnaise is the noblest of all emulsions!"

Two years later, I still consider that a great comment because it touches on how Southerners feel about the French-by-way-of-Spain sauce. It's omnipresent, particularly in the sandwich realm. It's the glue that keeps my minner cheese together, the binder for the tartar sauce that augments our Friday fish fry, the finishing touch to my lunchtime ham and cheese sandwich.

Mayonnaise wasn't always the ubiquitous sandwich spread. Time was, another egg-based spread was whipped up for sandwich- and salad-making, boiled dressing. This old-fashioned sauce is similar to mayonnaise - it uses egg yolks and a tiny bit of mustard for flavor and thickening, but whereas mayo relies on oil and a prayer to emulsify, boiled dressing adds flour and cream, caressed with a finishing swirl of butter. Mayonnaise is only slightly acidic, but boiled dressing will pucker your mouth with the tang of cider vinegar.

If mayonnaise is the noblest of emulsions, then boiled dressing is the tarted-up, some might say eccentric, Aunt Flossie brought out for non-public family occasions. Non-public, because by today's standards, it's really a bit of trouble and yields a small quantity. And family because, this is secret recipe kind of stuff, the kind of sauce on which legends and maybe fortunes can be made.

Boiled dressing is properly made in a double boiler, and it's sometimes called cooked dressing. As in Cole Slaw with Cooked Dressing, or Potato Salad with Cooked Dressing. I prefer boiled dressing on that staple of the Steel Magnolia circuit, chicken salad.

Easter eggs. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Forgive the tangentially-interesting pictures of the Easter eggs. We decorated 10 dozen Easter eggs, that's a lot of vinegar and color tabs, don't you think? Back to the subject at hand: eggs and chicken salad:

Southern boiled dressing. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

You use only white meat on your chicken salad, right? You know the girls in Junior League will talk behind your back in you put dark meat in your chicken salad. Just kidding. Here's how I poach chicken for chicken salad:

Poached chicken breasts

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, about a pound and a half

Juice of half a lemon

1/2 teaspoon salt

A few grinds of coarse black pepper

Water

1. In a skillet with a lid, set over medium heat, place chicken breasts and just barely cover with water. Add salt, lemon juice, and fresh ground black pepper. Let water come to a boil. Cover with lid, set heat to low and cook for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, use a fork and knife to determine doneness of the meat. If meat is still pink, cover and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Repeat as necessary until meat is cooked through.

2. Remove chicken breasts from broth (which may be saved for another purpose). Let cool enough to handle comfortably. Chop into smallish bites for chicken salad. And here's something I like to do before I mix together the chicken salad: I sprinkle a teaspoon or two of good-quality red wine vinegar over the chicken, and maybe a 1/4 teaspoon salt, just a tetch.

Favorite tip for bringing refrigerator-cold eggs to room temp: place in bowl of warm water. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books.

 Old-fashioned Boiled Dressing

1 teaspoon dry mustard

2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup water

2 egg yolks, beaten

3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons heavy cream

1. Place a double boiler on stovetop over medium heat. Fill bottom with enough water to just touch the bottom of inset. Let water come to a gentle boil.

2. Add dry ingredients into top of double boiler, whisk to break up lumps. Gradually whisk in water.

3. Add the egg yolks and vinegar and continue stirring. Let cook for at least five minutes, continually cooking. When mixture is thick, remove from heat and stir in butter, then cream. Season to taste, adding salt and pepper as needed. Ladylike cooks will add white pepper so as not detract from the creamy yellow sauce. I think white pepper tastes like soap, so I leave it out.

4. Let sauce come to room temperature. Use immediately in a recipe or store in a tightly covered jar in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Chicken salad on croissants. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 My Chicken Salad


3 boneless chicken breasts poached according to recipe above, or 2 cups chopped, cooked chicken


2 stalks celery, chopped fine


2 green onions, chopped


1 recipe Boiled Dressing from above recipe


1/2 to 1 cup mayonnaise or sour cream, depending on your preference


1/2 cup chopped pecans

Salt and pepper to taste


1. Toss together chicken, celery and onions. Add boiled dressing and taste. Add mayonnaise or sour cream, stir together, then taste. Adjust seasonings and dressing. Stir in chopped pecans. Serve.


For more egg-citing recipes, check out these #LetsLunch posts: 

- Cheryl‘s Singapore-Style Chai Poh Scramble at A Tiger in the Kitchen

– Charissa‘s Gluten-Free Leek, Ham & Pecorino Souffles at Zest Bakery

– Denise‘s Beet Dye & Pink Deviled Eggs at Chez Us

– Emma‘s Eggs In A Hole at Dreaming of Pots & Pans

– Felicia‘s Perfect Sandwich at Burnt-Out Baker

– Grace‘s Scrambled Eggs & Tomatoes at HapaMama

– Joe‘s Kim-Chi Deviled Eggs at Joe Yonan

– Linda‘s Home-made Cadbury Eggs (Maple Chocolate Eggs) at Free Range Cookies

– Lisa‘s Legendary Egg & Onion at Monday Morning Cooking Club


– Rashda‘s Bombay Toasts (Spicy French Toasts) at Hot Curries And Cold Beer

– Vivian‘s Oeuf Chaud Froid at Vivian Pei

A labor of love: Homemade egg pasta



Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

  Homemade pasta is one of those "many hands make for light work" kitchen projects. Sure, it can be made alone, and it's a pleasant task, and with the sunlight streaming through the window and NPR on the radio, a pasta project can make for a soothing and satisfying afternoon. In my house, though, I pull out the Atlas pasta machine and the girls come running, and crafting linguine becomes "mini hands make for light work."

Part of my motivation for writing about food is to leave a record for my children, so they will have recipes and recorded memories of our family life. I want my daughters to be competent in the kitchen, to know good food and feel comfortable preparing it - that's why I make homemade pasta and let my girls join in.

I wish I could say that I learned to make pasta from a nonna, one of the Italian grandmothers that Carol Field writes about in "In Nonna's Kitchen." My Alabama grandmother was a society lady who wore Italian leather pumps and could make a mean tomato aspic from Campbell's soup. For my own kitchen education, I turn to books, like those of Carol Field and Marcella Hazan. When I first started making pasta, I used the detailed instructions in Marcella’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.” I recommend it as the premier primer on homemade egg pasta.

Here is how I make pasta and a tasty clam sauce to accompany. To quell the anti-authentic hue and cry in the comment section, I will state first off that this is how a Scotch-Irish-German girl from Georgia makes pasta. I use a food processor to mix and knead it and I use salt and olive oil in the pasta dough. Marcella doesn’t do this - but my pasta turns out fine, so that’s all I can say. I’ve watched many times while TV chefs make a crater out of flour, crack eggs into it and mix all together with a fork. My experience with this method is a gunky countertop. The processor is super-fast and the clean-up is easy.

Homemade egg pasta for linguine

This is a double recipe of pasta, yielding about 1 ½ pounds. It’s too much for the accompanying clam sauce, unless you’re a serious carbo-phile. Toss noodles lightly in flour and arrange in nests on baking sheet. Let dry for an hour or so, place in plastic container and freeze. When it’s time to cook, frozen pasta can go directly into the boiling pot of pasta water.
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 large eggs, organic if possible

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1. In the bowl of a food processor, place flour and salt and pulse a few times to combine. Add eggs and olive oil and pulse until dough forms into a solid ball. Let knead by running processor for two minutes. The dough should be firm and smooth like a baby's bum.

2. Turn dough ball into an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rest for a half hour. You can also place dough in an oiled plastic bag, squish out the air, seal it and refrigerate for up to a day.

Pasta dough by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

3. When you’re ready to roll, make sure to have plenty of counter space and kitchen helpers. Divide dough into 12 equal-ish pieces and flatten each into a round. Dust your work area with flour and set a willing worker to roll the dough. Have a drying rack ready, or half-sheet pans dusted with flour, ready to receive noodles. Also handy to have around - a damp tea cloth or paper towel to spread over the pasta lumps as each waits its turn at the press.

4. With the pasta roller adjusted to the widest setting, feed the first flattened piece of dough through the pasta roller. Fold the remainder letter style, that is, top third and bottom third over middle. Feed this piece through. Repeat once more, for a total of three passes through the widest setting of the machine. Repeat with remaining 11 dough pieces.

5. Thinning: reduce the setting one notch and feed each piece through, setting each thinned piece on a floured countertop or across the drying rack. When each piece has been thinned, reduce the setting size to the next smallest number and run each piece through again. Repeat: reducing the setting and running a piece through until you reach the thinnest setting. After the final pass, the pasta sheets will be as long as a child’s winter scarf and as thin as a sheet of paper.

Baby girl making pasta. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

6. Attach the cutter to the pasta machine. Feed each sheet through the cutter, watching your child’s face as she sees the noodles take shape. If you do not have a pasta drying rack, you may set nests of the noodles on a lightly floured baking sheet.

Baby girl rolling out pasta. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

7. Let noodles dry while the water in the pasta pot comes to a boil. If you’ve never worked with fresh pasta, you will be amazed at how quickly it cooks - just a minute or two to toothsome noodles. Uncooked noodles may be stored in an airtight container in the freezer. They will cook easily in boiling water, no need to defrost.

Homemade linguine with clam sauce. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 

Clam Sauce

In my house this dish is simply called “clams.” If I use dried pasta, it’s a pantry meal that can be put together in about 30 minutes, while the water is boiling for the pasta. With homemade fresh pasta, it’s worthy of company.

½ medium onion, minced

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 (6 ½ oz.) cans chopped clams, drain and reserve liquid

½ cup dry white wine, or vermouth

A handful of fresh herbs such as oregano, basil and thyme, minced (in winter, start with ½ teaspoon Italian seasoning or a mixture of appropriate dried herbs in your cabinet, to taste)

Freshly ground black pepper

1 pound linguine, dried or fresh, cooked

1. In a skillet over medium heat, saute onion in olive oil until softened. Add garlic and stir for about 30 seconds.

2. Add wine and let cook until reduced by half. Add reserved clam liquid and allow to cook down.

3. Add clams, herbs and freshly ground pepper to taste. It’s tempting to add salt, but be very careful - it’s easy to over-salt this dish.

4. Serve over pasta.

Text and images © 2010, Lucy Mercer.

"In Nonna's Kitchen" by Carol Field, published 1997 by Harper Collins.

 "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" by Marcella Hazan, published 1992 by Knopf.

P is for Potluck (and Peas!)

7 Layer Salad by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Contrary to what many believe, May, not December, is the busiest month for my colleagues in the mommy business. You may think that December, with class parties and church happenings, would be the craziest time of the year, but the end of the school year seems to slip on us and before we know it, we’re slammed with breathlessly important occasions such as Teacher Appreciation Days and Fifth Grade Graduation and the End of Year Soccer/Beta Club/Band Party. All of these occasions demand food and eventually folks tire of pizza and that’s where the mommies step up and bring a covered dish.

The queen of the covered dish is my friend Julie. We’ve been friends since college, and twenty years after rooming together at UGA, we still seemed stunned that we spend our lives in carpool lines and not behind desks. Julie is a first-class cook and is always the first to volunteer to bring a dish to an event. In our weekly call from the carpool line, she told me that her latest success was a layered salad. If you're not familiar with the layered salad, it's the kind of recipe that Paula Deen has built an empire around. It's a potluck staple, a green salad layered in a pretty glass bowl with green peas, onions, bacon and cheese, then topped with a creamy mayonnaise dressing.

“It was a big hit,” she said. It kind of surprised her, but “you know, nobody cooks anymore. They eat in restaurants or if they cook, they open a box first.” We’ve decided that we’re the last of the casserole queens, the ones who cook from scratch and carry a dish to every family, church and school gathering. I suppose layered salad is kind of a cold casserole, with the base of lettuce substituting for pasta or rice, and the requisite green vegetable, peas in the middle. Topped with cheese, and mayonnaise subbing for the cream of whatever soup, and you see what I mean.

Julie’s recipe is from her church cookbook, and it’s from Miss Ethel Arrington, a woman who never married and played the organ at the church. Miss Ethel Arrington specified a can of LeSueur Peas in her layered salad, and Julie doesn’t substitute. The silver can is a guilty pleasure for me - I can’t think of LeSueur ("Very Young Small Early") peas without memories of my Grandmother Kitty, with her Montgomery, Alabama, accent, saying “LeSu-wuuuuu-er peas.” She served them at all family gatherings, convinced that the only green vegetable that her many grandchildren would eat is LeSueur brand peas. The menu would include a cooked ham, potato salad with and without celery (another story for another time), heated canned peas, blueberry Jell-O salad (the kind with the cream cheese topping) and, if we were lucky, her homemade itty-bitty biscuits.

While I keep a can of LeSueur peas in the pantry, I'm more likely to use frozen English peas when I cook. Peas are the only vegetable that comes to mind that is nearly as good frozen as fresh. It's a frozen pantry staple for me - a handful of peas thrown into a stir fry or added at the last minute to beef stew. Frozen peas are a kitchen workhorse, completing the sacred triumverate in a meat and potato meal, or adding their sweet mellow selves to a potluck dish. In a pinch, the bag of frozen peas makes a handy ice pack for boo-boos. (At the very least, it will get a giggle from your child.)

My layered salad is adapted from Allrecipes.com, perhaps the church cookbook of the internet age. If you want to be true to Miss Ethel Arrington and my grandmother, use two cans of LeSueur peas, drained, instead of the frozen, thawed, English peas. Peas are a good choice for the layered salad, between the sharp onion and crunchy lettuce, creamy mayonnaise dressing and salty bacon, the emerald spheres make pleasant, sweet pops in your mouth.

7 layer salad. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Sweet Pea Seven-Layered Salad

1 lb. bacon, cooked, crumbled, drained

1 head of iceberg lettuce, chopped

1 bunch green onions, all of white and some green, chopped fine

1 (12 oz.) package frozen green peas, thawed

1 ½ cups shredded Cheddar cheese

1 cup chopped cauliflower

1 ¼ cups mayonnaise

2 tablespoons sugar

4 perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs, peeled and diced

A handful of wasabi peas, optional

1. In a small bowl, stir together mayonnaise and sugar and let rest while you assemble the salad.

2. Use a large, clear glass bowl, if you have one, but any large, deep bowl will do. Place the lettuce in the bottom of the bowl and top with a layer of onion, then follow with peas, shredded cheese and cauliflower. Spread mayonnaise mixture on top of salad. Sprinkle bacon and egg on top. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

3. If you want a little kick to your layered salad, add my favorite crunchy/spicy snack - wasabi peas across the top of individual servings.

© 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Incredible, edible egg salad

Egg salad is a humble and filling concoction. It can be as simple as leftover hard-boiled eggs and a jar of Hellmann’s or, with a little finesse, a show-off sandwich spread and star of an elegant appetizer. The secret is to employ the magic of the eggs, letting eggs do double duty as the bulk of the salad and the binder, which means, in this case, making mayonnaise from scratch. Mayonnaise from scratch need hold no fear for the home cook. One fresh egg yolk, less than a cup of fresh oil, a few minutes of your time and a sturdy whisk are all it takes to make a luscious, homemade mayonnaise that will elevate your egg salad from ho-hum to va-va-va-voom.

Pay attention to the basics when making your egg salad sandwich. Eggs should be properly boiled, no mineral gray ring covering the chalky yolk; whites just set, not rubbery. Creamy mayo, but not too salty. A little kick, maybe pepper, maybe hot sauce. Onion? No way, but perhaps a hint of chive. Crunch? Celery is for sissies and potato salad. I prefer radishes for a peppery bite and crunch. The bread must be toasted, and wheat is the only way to go. The blandness of white bread offers no contrast to the creamy egg salad.

Homemade Mayonnaise

Adapted from the Gourmet Cookbook and online sources

1 very fresh egg yolk

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup canola oil

1 ½ teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

Pepper to taste

1. In a small bowl, place egg yolk, mustard and salt. Whisk until combined. Drop by drop, pour and whisk ¼ cup of the canola oil into the mixture. This will take up to 10 minutes (for me, at least). After the oil is thoroughly combined with the yolk, whisk in the vinegar and lemon juice. In a slow stream, add remaining oil. Take your time and make sure you do this right. If the mixture ever looks like it’s separating, stop pouring in oil and whisk the heck out of it, to combine. If you do this right, you will see the mixture change from dark yellow to lighter and creamier, ultimately a thick sauce, not fluffy like the stuff from the jar, but creamy and delicious, just the same.

Hard Boiled Eggs

Everyone and his dog has a recipe for perfect hard-boiled eggs. My advice is to keep trying until you find one that works for you. Here’s my method:

Start with a saucepan and insert a steamer basket (if you have it - this makes it easier to remove the eggs and also keeps them from bouncing around on the bottom of the pot). Place 6 eggs on opened basket, cover with cold water, bring to a rolling boil, cover and cook for less than a minute. Pull covered pan off the heat and turn kitchen timer to 13 minutes. Some folks say 12 minutes, some say 15. All I know is that mine were cooked perfectly at 13 minutes. Have an ice water bath nearby and plunge the cooked eggs into the cold water. When cool enough to handle, peel away the shells. Old eggs are easier to peel due to the air pocket, fresher eggs stubbornly hang on to their shells.

Egg Salad

½ cup homemade mayonnaise

6 hard-boiled eggs

Salt and pepper to taste

2 teaspoons chopped chives

thinly sliced radishes

Assemble sandwich:

1. To properly chop the eggs, I employ the same tool that I use to make a pie crust: a pastry blender. Halve the boiled eggs into a bowl and mash them up with the blender, you may also use a fork.

2. While mixing the spread, toast the wheat bread, use homemade if available.

3. Gently fold the chopped eggs into the mayonnise. Texture is what you’re after. Taste and correct seasoning. It may need more mayo for moisture or acid for contrast. Will probably definitely need pepper.

4. Spread a thin layer of mayo on bread. Then layer radishes, then egg salad. Apply lid to sandwich. Grab a good book, pull up to the counter and tuck in.

Oh, and here's the bonus: a canape: Egg Salad with Chives on Radish Rounds. How simple is this, a baby spoonful of egg salad on a sliced radish, with a sliver of chive on top?

Text & images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.