What to Do With Your Easter Eggs

If you have some Easter eggs you need to use up, you could do worse than to make this egg salad wrap out of them. The fridge was fairly empty, except for the aforementioned eggs. My husband hates hardboiled eggs, but he was so desperately hungry that he asked me to make egg salad.  He surprised himself by actually liking it.

I really don't have a recipe for this, but the general method is as follows: Take some hardboiled eggs, and using a fork, mash them up with some mayonnaise, a minuscule amount of minced onion, chopped chives (if you have them), cilantro (if you have it, or parsley), and the barest amount of smoked paprika, along with salt and pepper to taste. Serve as a sandwich or wrap in a tortilla. Lettuce and tomato are welcome additions.

As an alternative to egg salad, you could do deviled eggs. (Easter deviled eggs. Hmm. Sounds sacreligious! Or maybe just ironic.) Same concept, just slice the eggs in half lengthwise, scoop out the yolks, and mash them with the same ingredients (except smoked paprika) listed above. Spoon the yolk mixture back into the egg halves. Sprinkle the smoked paprika on top, instead of mixing it in. It looks prettier that way. (My friend served her deviled eggs with mojitos. I think I sense the beginning of a new Easter tradition. At least for the Easters when it's 80-plus degrees outside.)

One more thing: This is the last recipe I'll post for awhile in which smoked paprika is used. I know it's good, but enough already. Even I'm getting sick of it. If you are already sick of it, regular paprika is always an option when it comes to egg salad. Or even a little cayenne pepper.

Still Haven't Found It

It's springtime, and I can't find any rhubarb. Plenty of things grow here in Georgia that don't grow as well up North – things I like, like collard greens, sweet potatoes, pecans, peaches, scuppernongs, etc... I would say I love scuppernongs more than rhubarb, except for the fact that I didn't grow up with them. They don't have the same resonance. (What is a scuppernong, you ask? It is a bronzey-green-colored grape native to the Southeast, with a tough, resinous skin, and an amazingly sweet, gelatinous inside which tastes more grapey than any grape you've ever had. You put the whole thing in your mouth, suck out the jelly, pick out the seeds with your tongue, then spit the seeds out along with the skin. And you make grape jelly with them, too. Or wine, which I've never tried, but imagine is a thing of beauty.) Scuppernongs come in late summer, while rhubarb is a spring thing. If you're in Georgia, go to your local farmer's market in August and September and seek out the scuppernongs.

But back to rhubarb. I mentioned its resonance – I always think of my grandmother when I think of rhubarb. My grandmother wasn't big on cooking. What I mean is, she cooked a lot – she made sure everyone was fed, and did it with love. But she didn't invest a lot of mental energy in it – she made a lot of beef and boiled potatoes, spaghetti with jarred sauce (diluted with water so it would last longer), and a lot of pancakes, fried eggs, bacon, and toast. Wonder Bread was the bread of choice. Oscar Mayer bologna was often featured prominently between the two slices of bread.

But my grandmother did do one thing special for me, that I loved more than anything else, and that was to make me rhubarb sauce. Basically she would take rhubarb from the yard, chop it, and cook it with butter and sugar in a saucepan until it was soft and stringy. Then she would spoon the warm, sweet-tart sauce into a bowl, and I would sit there and have three servings. She always let me have as much as I wanted.

The particularly bright part of this memory is when the raspberries were in season. Then she would send me out with a large bowl and I would pick raspberries from the bushes near the shed with the white paint blistering off of it. The door always hung slightly ajar, and a shaft of light would make twisted shadows inside, partially illuminating the broken down and rusty machinery. I would bring her the raspberries and she would add them to the rhubarb sauce. And when there were strawberries, we'd add those.

My dad could have taken over the dairy farm when my grandparents retired, but there was "no living in it," and he went on to college and life raising his family in the suburbs. All of the buildings except for the main house have either been bulldozed or toppled of their own accord. My uncle lives in the main house now with his family. A natural gas company is using the hay field as a staging area for their equipment as they build a pipeline. They are paying my uncle $30,000 for the privilege of using the land, which they are contractually obligated to return "to its original state." Nothing ever returns to its original state, but I keep trying.

Update 4/1/10: Lisa of Lisa's Kitchen informs me that the fresh chickpea salad my three-year-old and I enjoyed so much (and a posse of five-year-olds found "disgusting") has won the March "No Croutons Required" contest! Woohoo! Thank you, Lisa, for letting me know about the contest. April's contest is being hosted by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes, and calls for a salad or soup which features a member of the allium family (ie: onions, garlic, chives, etc....) Be sure to check it out.

Would You Like Fries With That?

Sometimes all a woman wants is a good burger and some French fries. What's more, she wants her husband, the Hindu, to eat a burger and fries with her. So she makes lentil burgers, oven fries, and salad with Green Goddess dressing, and all is right with the world.

I started this meal excited about the burger and fries, but ended with a passion for the Green Goddess salad dressing. We found it was good on pretty much everything. The five-year-old liked it better than ketchup for her fries, which is saying a lot. Of course, the three-year-old only ate ketchup, no fries. Such is life, I guess.

I used Mark Bittman's recipes for the veggie burger and oven fries, from the encyclopedic How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. (This book truly lives up to its title – it even sports a recipe for seaweed "mayonnaise." I'm curious. Haven't tried it yet, but am curious.) My husband had his lentil burger with rice, while I had mine as a lone patty. But feel free to eat it as a regular old burger in a bun, with all the fixings. Whatever you want to do.

For the general idea of the Green Goddess, I relied on my good old 1964 edition of The Joy of Cooking, which has never steered me wrong, recipe for muskrat notwithstanding. (Muskrat is to be served with creamed celery. Who knew?)

Lentil Burgers (adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian)
2 cups well-cooked brown lentils
1 small onion, quartered
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoon chili powder or spice mix of your choice (Be creative. I used a tablespoon of leftover extremely garlicky tomato sauce.)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper (Be generous with the pepper.)
1 egg
Lentil cooking liquid if necessary

Combine all ingredients (except cooking liquid) in a food processor and pulse until combined. The mixture should still be chunky, not pureed, and moist, but not wet. Add a little of the cooking liquid if the mixture is too dry. Conversely, if your mixture is too wet, try adding more rolled oats. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes if you have the time. It will solidify a bit and be easier to work with.

Pour a glug of oil into a non-stick skillet on medium heat. Shape the mixture into patties, and add the patties to the skillet once the oil is hot. Cook them until they are nicely browned, then flip carefully and brown the other side.

Serve them as you would a burger. Another idea is to make a veggie gyro, and serve inside pita bread, with lettuce, tomato, sliced onion, and tzatziki sauce.

Oven Fries (adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian)
olive oil
6 or 7 medium sized organic Russet potatoes, sliced into 1/2-inch thick wedges, skin intact
salt and pepper
three cloves of garlic, minced (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Coat a large rimmed baking sheet with olive oil. The baking sheet needs to be big enough to hold all of the potatoes in a single layer. Toss the potatoes with more olive oil, and salt and pepper. Arrange the potatoes in a single layer on the baking sheet, and bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are nicely browned. Sprinkle the minced garlic (if using) over the potatoes, and bake for about five more minutes. Remove the potatoes with an offset spatula (as they might stick a bit), and serve with ketchup or dipping sauce of your choice.

Green Goddess Dressing (loosely adapted from 1964 edition of The Joy of Cooking)
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1 clove garlic
handful of chives
handful of cilantro
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Add all ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth. Use as a salad dressing on a sturdy lettuce like Romaine. Romaine lettuce mixed with accents of cavolo nero (dinosaur kale) works well. Also great as a dip for French fries and vegetables. The husband liked it slathered atop his lentil patties and rice. The dressing tastes better the next day, but even giving a half hour for the flavors to meld is worthwhile if you have the time.

Spring Tonic Soup

I've been thinking of Clara lately. In case you don't know, I am referring to 94-year-old great grandmother Clara Cannucciari, of "Great Depression Cooking with Clara" fame. Most recently, I was watching her Egg Drop Soup episode when she said something that made me smile: "Have you noticed all the meals I make have the same ingredients – onions, potatoes." Clearly Clara and I operate on the same cooking plane, and there is a reason for that: onions and potatoes are easy to grow, cheap, nutritious, and tasty. In other words, they are "Depression food," or maybe we should update that to "Great Recession food." Or maybe just "hard times" food, to be as inclusive as possible. Though even if I could afford truffles and caviar on a daily basis, I would still probably eat a lot of potatoes and onions, because I like them.

There are several other vegetables I like that fall under the hard times food heading. Collard greens happen to be one. They grow quite well here in the South. The important thing about collard greens is they are sturdy enough to survive the winter, and keep growing on into spring. That means we people of limited access to cash have something fresh, local, and green to eat in early spring, and if you are able to grow them yourself, so much the better. Which brings me to something Clara said in another episode: "Everything was terrible, but we ate good food." That pretty much sums up my entire philosophy of life.

Last Wednesday I harvested collard greens, a handful of cilantro, onion greens and chives from my trusty community garden plot. It was also my turn to care for the garden's resident chickens, and they were kind enough to return the favor with eight eggs. Thanks, ladies.

Clara's Egg Drop Soup was fresh in my mind, and I was feeling a bit run-down, so I decided to create a bracing, vitamin-filled, garlicky, spring tonic version of her soup, using the bounty of my harvest. I felt very strong and healthy after eating it, which makes sense because it also tasted strong and healthy, and I mean that in a good way. The collard greens were pleasantly astringent in flavor. The cilantro added a grassy spring boldness to the whole thing. I only used one handful for the soup this time, but next time, will definitely add two.

Spring Green and Garlic Egg Drop Soup (loosely inspired by Clara Cannucciari's Egg Drop Soup)
a few tablespoons of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
pinch of red pepper flakes
4 thin-skinned potatoes, halved and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
1 small bunch of onion greens or scallions, thinly chopped
1 bunch of spring collard greens, removed from stems and coarsely chopped
enough water to cover
1 or 2 tablespoons of chopped chives
1 or 2 handfuls of chopped cilantro
4 eggs, lightly beaten
a splash of sherry vinegar or lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large pot, then add the garlic and the red pepper flakes. Add the potatoes when you begin to smell the garlic. Cook the potatoes for several minutes, until they begin to soften. You can add a little salt as the potatoes cook. It's also OK to add a little water to the pot.  Add the onion greens, the collard greens, and a little more salt, and cook for a few minutes until the collard greens begin to wilt. Add enough water to cover the contents of the pot, and a little more salt, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, turn the heat down so that the soup is kept at a steady simmer. Cook until the potatoes and collard greens are tender. The collard greens should still be bright green, unless you have a particularly leathery set of greens, in which case you may have to cook them longer, and their color will dull. Add the chives and cilantro, and then with the heat turned low, add the eggs in a slow stream, turning the contents of the pot in a circular motion as you add them. Add a splash of sherry vinegar (or lemon juice), and more salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a crusty slice of buttered bread.