EGGS AND SMALL PLATES

Place hot, thickly sliced, poached turkey or chicken breasts on a heated serving dish, overlapping the slices so that all will be sauced. Arrange hot cooked broccoli florets around the meat. Cover with the sauce. Sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheese and broil quickly until lightly colored on top.

Sauce: Combine ½ cup of Béchamel sauce with one cup of Hollandaise sauce, ½ teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, two teaspoons of Sherry and fold in about one half cup of whipped cream. Elaborate but magnificent.

• 1 lb. of cold soup meat or pot roast
• ½ onion
• 2 scallions
• 2 small salt pickles
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 or 2 stalks of celery – stringed and chopped
• celery leaves
• parsley
• oregano, fresh thyme-minced
• 2 tablespoons of capers
• 1/3 cup olive oil, vinegar

Mince the vegetables and herbs. Shred or dice the meat and toss it with the other ingredients. Dress with 1/3 cup of olive oil and 2 teaspoons of vinegar, salt and pepper. Let the salad marinate for several hours, or overnight. Add minced parsley and stir in. Serve with lettuce and quartered tomatoes, and quartered hard boiled eggs. In France this is salade de bouille. Makes a good sandwich, also.

This is an ancient recipe in the Bartholomew family and probably came from Lorraine, where soup is a very common meal. We often had a beef and vegetable soup, and the salad the next day.

Whenever the title “Florentine” is on a recipe, you may be sure that it contains spinach. Keep some excess Bechamel in the freezer, thaw it, add some cream and heat it – whipping like mad until it smoothes out. Add an egg yolk and some grated Swiss and Parmesan and you have a Mornay sauce to use in making almost anything into an elegant gratin. Just plain Bechamel will work wonders for broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, etc.

This recipe is for four poached eggs, two per person. Cook a package of frozen chopped spinach, or use the real thing. Dry it very well by pushing on it in a colander, then heating it in a saucepan to finish drying. Add some butter and season it with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg. Put the spinach into a well-buttered heated gratin dish and make four indentations and into each place a poached egg. Cover with Mornay sauce, sprinkle lightly with breadcrumbs and a tablespoon of grated Parmesan. Have the spinach hot and put the dish under a hot broiler for just a minute or so, watching it carefully, until the top is very lightly browned. Accompany this with some crusty bread, heated.

Kale may be used in place of spinach. This may be done with pureed spinach - with plenty of butter, a good pinch of sugar and a small pinch of nutmeg.

• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 onion – chopped
• 2 green bell peppers
• 2 cloves of garlic – minced
• 2 lbs. tomatoes – peeled, seeded and chopped in chunks
• a small pinch of red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar
• about ½ cup of good quality ham.

Section and clean the peppers, lay them skin side up and flattened, on a baking sheet and broil them for a few minutes, about 6 inches from the heat, until they blister all over and begin to char. “Sweat” them in a plastic bag for 10 minutes. They peel very easily. Try it, you’ll learn.

Cook the onions and peppers in the oil until they begin to color. Add the garlic, ham and seasonings and cook until the onion and peppers are soft. Add the tomatoes and sugar, cover the pan and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Uncover and cook to thicken if needed.

For the omelet, mix in 1 tablespoon of the piperade per beaten egg and cook together in a buttered pan like scrambled eggs. Top with more of the piperade when serving. One can also make a traditional omelet and cut and fill it with the piperade.

Cook piperade as above, but without the ham. Sauté a ham steak in another pan, spoon some piperade over it, cover and cook on a very low fire for a couple of minutes – just enough to heat the sauce.

Have eggs at room temperature. Put them into a bowl of hot tap water for 10 or 15 minutes if very cold. Pierce the large end with an egg piercer, map pin or whatever – to prevent breaking. Cooking times will vary due to egg size and temperature. Stir or swirl the pot every few minutes, to prevent hard spots in the egg where it touches the pot. Boiled eggs come in three different models:

Coddled eggs – Place in boiling water, bring back to a boil and remove the pot from the fire. Cover and let it sit for exactly 5 minutes, place in cool water to stop the cooking, then open the eggs without delay. Be careful, they are runny. The yellow will be barely cooked and the white cooked but still very soft, for the most part. Many people like this for breakfast, eaten with buttered toast. Added to vinaigrette, it makes a wonderful dressing for green salad. Beat it to smooth out the white bits, or just put one coddled egg on top of the salad to be tossed.

Soft Boiled eggs – this takes a 7 minute sitting off the fire, covered. Stir a few times. The whites will be set but the yolks still runny. Place in cold water to stop the cooking. When handled properly, they can be peeled and used like poached eggs for Oeuf en Gelee or other dishes. Soft boiled eggs should be peeled under water so that they do not crack of their own weight. Cup them in one hand when handling.

Hard Boiled eggs – Let them have 10 to 12 minutes of sitting, after covering. Stir now and then to even the cooking. Peel one and cut it to test for doneness. If it is cooked through, drain the rest, crack their shells and put them into a bowl of ice water. This will stop the cooking and prevent the yolks from turning greenish and tasting sulphorous. This 12 minute method results in tender whites and avoids the nasty rubbery texture of caterers’ stuffed eggs. Small eggs will cook in 10 minutes.

See Stuffed Eggs in the Hors d’Oeuvre & Party Food section.

This is one of those things to make up as you go, until you find a mix that you really like. The 12 minute egg as above is used here. I like them chopped in large pieces. The recipe is included as a companion to the Goose Egg Sandwich below..

Mix mayonnaise with mustard and things like dill relish or olive salad, maybe strained salsa. It’s what you have in the larder. (Dry things like pickle relish by pressing between paper towels, you do not want a soupy dressing.) Use lots of minced shallots, parsley, cilantro, celery, etc., for flavor and texture. Have the dressing well mixed and pour it over the chopped eggs. Turn lightly, then refrigerate and let it rest to meld the flavors. Be wary when adding salt, the dressing ingredients are full of it.

This is from CC’s youth, when she ate them at “One’s a Meal“, a diner in the small (now large) shopping center across Shepherd Dr. from the house in Houston. Apparently it was their invention, since no one seems to have heard of it otherwise.

It is simply slices of liver cheese loaf with egg salad, on sliced bread. Garnishes are optional. Trimmed of crust and cut in four, this makes an interesting finger sandwich.

Another easy one, good for an hors d’oeuvre course (with a dab of sour cream and caviar on top), or as a cool breakfast or light lunch. This can be made with peeled soft boiled or with poached eggs.

There are oval cups made for this, but any cup deep enough to cover the egg will work. Taste for seasoning, then heat about 2 cups of a good, rich stock or consomme. Add a little chopped tarragon and any other herbs to your taste. Soak a tablespoon of gelatine in 2 tablespoons of cold water, then dissolve it in the hot consomme. Let it cool and taste for seasoning. Put a peeled soft boiled or poached egg into the cup and cover with the cooled consomme, chill until it jells. The runny yolk and the jellied consomme are a great combination. Crisp buttered toast goes well with it.

see Cuban Eggs in Pasta section.

Fill a skillet with 2” of water, add a teaspoon of white vinegar and bring to just below boiling. Break a room temperature egg into a saucer and slip it into the water at the edge of the pan. (This will help it keep its shape.) The objective is to make a nice oval of cooked egg white with a runny yolk centered in it.

Cook the egg for about 2 minutes and loosen it from the pan if it is sticking. Flip it over with a pierced spoon and cook 2 minutes more, or until the white is firmed up but tender, and the yolks runny. Place it in a bowl of warm water to wash off the vinegar and carefully dry on paper or cloth towels. The eggs may be scooped up in the hand and trimmed of any flapping bits.

Poached eggs can be kept in cold water in the fridge, as long as overnight. Warm them gently in hot, not boiling, water for a couple of minutes.

This is about the nicest thing that can happen to an egg. Restaurants can’t let it alone today, and some make them with a slice of fried green tomato slipped under the egg and another version was topped with fried oysters. Stick to the classic, it needs no improving. (It is good to put the ham on the side and let the egg soak into the English muffin.) Canadian bacon was, as far as I know, the original meat used in it. It is now hard to find and tough as a boot if you do find it.

Moisten a split English muffin, then lightly toast all sides under a broiler. Butter each half and top with a round of thinly sliced boiled ham. Place a warm poached egg on each half of the muffin and cover with a generous amount of Hollandaise sauce.

This is the New Orleans version of the Croque Monsieur, known in some circles as a fried cheese sandwich. The French butter the outside of the sandwich and then fry it – this keeps the butter from being soaked up by the bread. Our version is a hybrid of Pain Perdue and the croque. This is the way it was made in this family. It must be handled carefully, as it is quite soft.

Make a ham and cheese sandwich on buttered (on the inside) white bread - stale is preferred. Mix a beaten egg with ½ cup of milk, a small pinch of nutmeg and salt and pepper or Tabasco. Press the sandwich lightly to firm it up, then let it soak in the milk mixture for a few seconds or so on each side. It will be very limp, depending upon the bread's texture.

Heat about 2 teaspoons of butter and the same amount of a clean tasting oil in a frying pan and cook the sandwich on a slow fire until it is a golden brown, turning once. Keep the heat down to medium/low to avoid burning. The cheese should melt and custard form in the bread. This is a knife and fork sandwich.

“One of Maggie’s favorites. One large beef round, 1 onion, flour, seasoning. Cut the round into serving-sized pieces, dredge or sprinkle flour over the meat and pound flour into meat on both sides. Brown meat in shortening on both sides. When second side is almost done, slice onion over the meat. Either cover or brown onion without cover. When onion is soft, slowly add water, stirring flour to make a sauce. Add seasoning – parsley, thyme, oregano, salt if desired. Herbs usually don’t need salt. Cook (covered, on a very low fire) until the meat is tender. If not thick enough, a little flour and water will thicken it. Don’t put too much flour on the meat, be stingy, as it will make a paste if too much flour is used. Have a loaf of French bread ready, cut in half, spread with Mayo, meat and sauce, and you have it.”

This recipe is verbatim from her written note. It is essentially a mini pot roast; add tomatoes and sweet peppers and it is Grillades. It is all basically braising, a very useful technique for cheap cuts of meat.

In a baking pan or souffle dish, layer crustless slices of a good, dense bread with about 1 cup of diced ham and 3/4 cup of white cheese.

Scald 1 cup of milk and melt ¼ stick of butter in it with a pinch of salt, pepper and nutmeg. Cook a minced onion in butter and add it to the mix along with a beaten large egg, some minced parsley and a little powdered thyme. Stir well and pour over the bread. Let it soak and place the dish in a pan of hot water. Dot the top with butter and bake at 350° for 35 or 40 minutes. Serve hot.

Cooked vegetables, such as carrot, celery, stems of broccoli, mushrooms, etc., can be diced and added to the mix.

CC liked to get this at the Baroque restaurant in New York, where it was always on the menu. When she started cooking she found the recipe, made it, and it turned out to be not very difficult. It is a great summer dish, and it is amazing that restaurants have not taken it up.

You must use a good quality canned tuna, especially the Spanish or Italian kind in olive oil. This is not food snob stuff – the supermarket brands make this dish taste muddy. It is pointless to make this one with anything but real, pale pink veal. (That said, I will mention that it is pretty good when made with turkey breast.) This recipe is adapted from Italian Regional Cooking by Ada Boni, a great cookbook.

• 2 to 2 ½ lb. boned leg of veal, well trussed with kitchen string
• 8 oz. can of tuna in olive oil
• 6 anchovy fillets – minced
• 1 chopped small onion
• 2 small carrots, chopped
• 1 cup white wine
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1 cup water, salt and pepper
• 2 hard boiled egg yolks

In a Dutch oven sear the veal lightly in the oil from the tuna, then add the other ingredients, except the egg yolks. Bring nearly to boiling and adjust the heat to a slow simmer. Cover and check often to see that it does not boil. Cook very gently for 1 ½ hrs., turning it a few times, or until meat is tender.

Take the meat out and place it in a plastic bag – push the air out and twist the top of the bag to provide a very tight covering that will keep the meat together and firm. Let cool and refrigerate.

Puree the cooking liquid in a blender or processor and put it through a fine sieve. Beat two mashed boiled egg yolks with just enough olive oil to make a thick paste, mix with enough of the puree to make a thick but liquid consistency. Add 1 tablespoon of capers.

Slice the meat thinly and arrange on a platter with some of the sauce. Garnish with tomato quarters, capers and watercress. Serve the sauce in a boat. Have some crusty hot bread for sauce mopping-up. Magnifico!

CC’s method was to add home-made mayonnaise to the sauce, instead of the oil and egg yolks. It should be served chilled or room temperature and Sra. Boni recommends a 24 hr. chilling with some sauce on the sliced meat. This is used as an hors d’oeuvre in Italy, but it was dinner for us in hot weather. Rich, flavorful and satisfying. Cucumber Ice with tomato is the perfect side for it, along with a simple green salad.

One of the things that my Mother cooked was Codfish Balls. I thought they were from New England, where her Wilder ancestors lived, but it turns out that they are great favorites in the Iberian peninsula. From what I can remember, they were made from the soaked and prepared bacalao, mashed potatoes, lots of chopped scallions and parsley and formed into 1” x 3” sort of fat patties and fried in butter. There is egg in the mix, because a thin, crisp crust formed. They were accompanied by a thin tomato sauce. CC never made them, she hated the idea. They are delicious.

This was a favorite of my father-in-law, Jim Shepherd. (And a better father-in-law has not existed) He discovered it at the Norse Grill of the Waldorf hotel, and I think he had it every time he went to New York.

It is simply what the name says, cold roasted rack of lamb. Mostarda Cremonese is small candied fruit in a heavy syrup, lightly flavored with mustard oil. It is available at on-line retailers. Wonderful with boiled beef, etc. The roasted lamb is served cut into chops.

CC made this dish with the frozen puff paste, cut into 1 x 4” strips and baked until crisp. Originally, she used the patty shells but they tend to be tough on the bottom.

To make the Sauce:

Prepare a velouté sauce, using chicken stock and cream for the liquids. Add cooked chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces, and some cooked sweetbreads (if you happen to have some),lightly cooked sliced mushrooms, cooked shallots and celery with powdered thyme and bayleaf, chopped parsley and a beaten egg. Simmer for about ten minutes, stirring often.

Serve in ramekins, with the puff pastry on the side, or serve in heated patty shells.

The original recipe was for an 8” pastry case made of puff pastry, shaped just like the patty shells.

See also Seafood