What to do with an Inside-Out Egg?

Inside-out Egg

I found these at our Farmer's Market last weekend. What a trip! The farmer said it is an heirloom breed of chicken that he's in the process of re-establishing as a breeding flock, but had just a few eggs to sell. So far I've eaten a couple just soft-boiled like this, on toast. The taste is perfectly normal, except, well, inside out. Anyone have any better ideas of how to really showcase this unique find?

Ok, I admit it... here's the truth about the egg! Use the links in the box below and see if you can fool your friends.

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Chana Dal in the Style of Puri Jagannath Temple - Recipe

Chana Dal in the Style of Puri Jagannath Temple

Every time I eat some form of beans and rice, I ask myself why I don't do that at least 3-4 times a week. Not because of the health factor (though it is great for you), or because it is famously inexpensive. Just because I find it so satisfying. It has that ability to make me feel like all is right with the world.

Dal, of course, is simply the Indian word for the whole range of dried beans and lentils, as well as the name for a soup or thick stew made from them. Some form of dal is on the menu at pretty much any Indian meal, whether humble or royal. The famous Bukhara restaurant in the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi serves a black-gram dal rich with an astonishing amount of ghee (clarified butter). The typical dish is much leaner!

There are many varieties of dal, but lately I've grown fond of chana dal, which comes from small, split brown chickpeas with their seed coats removed. They cook much more quickly than normal chickpeas, but can retain a bit of integrity and texture instead of falling completely apart. You can find them at any Indian grocery, or (at greatly inflated but still cheap enough prices) at Whole Foods.

I was looking for a new chana dal recipe and came across this one from the Puri Jagannath Temple via the Oriya Kitchen website. I adapted it slightly to suit what I had in the house. I happened to only have 1.5 cups of chana, so I made up the difference with red lentils. I figured the red lentils would completely dissolve and create some sauce to surround the chana dal, and that worked out just fine. I also used dried coconut instead of fresh, and powdered cinnamon instead of whole sticks.

I found it interesting that this recipe calls for more of the "sweeter" spices (cinnamon, cloves, coriander) to be added early, and the more pungent ones (mustard, fennel, cumin, fenugreek) in the last minute tempering. "Tempering" (in this case) means to fry the spices in a bit of oil or ghee and add them to a dish at the last minute so as to be able to fully appreciate their volatile compounds. It is a valuable technique that you will find used in many Indian recipes.

At any rate, here is my version of the Puri Jagganath Temple dal, adapted to my kitchen. Apologies in advance if anyone feels I haven't done proper service to the original recipe, but I thought it was delicious. Serve it forth with a bowl of basmati rice and some plain yogurt or raita, and you've got a great one-pot meal. Or use it as a side dish in a more elaborate feast. You can adjust the texture to a thinner soup or a thicker stew-like consistency, just by cooking a little longer or adding more water.

Puri Jagganath Temple Chana Dal, Herbivoracious Style
Serves 4 as a main course with rice, or 8 as a side dish
Vegetarian and gluten free; vegan if you use oil instead of butter

• 1.5 cups of chana dal
• 1/2 cup red lentils
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 teaspoons salt
• pinch of sugar
  
  
• 1/4 cup dried unsweeted coconut
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  
• seeds from 4 cardamom pods or 1 teaspoon cardamom powder
• 4 whole cloves or 1/4 teaspoon clove powder
  
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
  
  
• 1 tablespoon ghee, butter, or vegetable oil
  
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
  
  
• optional: cilantro for garnish
  

1. Carefully pick through the dals looking for any stray pebbles and such. Rinse them thoroughly. Bring to a boil with 4 cups of water, the turmeric, salt, and sugar. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally until the chana dal is almost tender. Don't let them scorch, and do add more water as needed.
2. Meanwhile, in a small food processor, combine the coconut, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, black pepper, 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds, and coriander seeds with 1/2 cup of very hot water. Puree until it is a rough paste and the coconut has started to soften. Add more water if needed. Add this mixture to the dal and cook for 20 more minutes.
3. Just before serving, heat the butter over a medium-high flame in a small skillet and toss in the remaining cumin seeds along with the mustard, fennel, and fenugreek. Fry for about a minute, until the mustard seeds begin to pop. Don't burn the seeds. Stir them into the dal, taste for any final season adjustments needed, garnish with cilantro, and serve.

Chocolate Eclairs - Recipe

Chocolate eclair

When I asked my wife what I should make for a Valentine's day dessert, there was no hesitation. "Eclairs", said she, and far be it from me to disappoint. For some reason I've never made them before, though I like them very much, so I was excited for the challenge.

My habit when looking for recipes lately is to search on TasteSpotting, foodgawker and Photograzing, because I can get an immediate visual indication of whether the results look delicious.

When I searched for eclairs, I immediately saw that the Daring Bakers had done them, and most had followed this Pierre Herme recipe. It sounded fantastic, but I thought the instructions for the glaze seemed a bit overcomplicated, requiring you to first make a chocolate sauce and then turn that into a chocolate glaze. I imagine that relates more to a commercial setting where the chocolate sauce is already on hand as a component.

Then I remembered that the Tartine cookbook has an eclair recipe. Everything I've made from this book has been spectacular. Comparing, I saw that the choux paste recipe is almost identical, except Tartine uses nonfat instead of whole milk, and a full teaspoon of sugar. I'm guessing the nonfat milk provides more flavor because of the higher percentage of milk solids that can brown.

The Tartine glaze was drastically simpler though. It is just a very firm ganache with some corn syrup for shine. Here's the recipe, lightly adapted: 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used 71% Scharffen-Berger), 1/2 cup heavy cream, 1 tablespoon light corn syrup. Bring the cream to a simmer in a large bowl in the microwave. Remove from the microwave, stir in the chocolate and corn syrup, let sit for a couple minutes and stir again until everything is melted and smooth. Let cool until barely warm and then dip the tops of the eclairs in it.

I also used the Tartine vanilla bean pastry cream, but you could use any pastry cream recipe that you like, either chocolate or vanilla or crazier stuff if you are so inclined. I saw a matcha filling that I bet would be amazing. I'd recommend making the pastry cream a day or two in advance, as it needs to be very cold for filling, and it gives you one less thing to do the day you want to serve the eclairs. I opted for the slice-and-fill approach rather than trying to pipe in from a hole in the end.

For absolute best-ness, fill the eclairs and put them in the refrigerator for just 20 minutes or so to allow the ganache to set up, then devour. They will hold for a few hours in the fridge, but any more than that and sogginess is a risk. Less risk if you store them unwrapped or loosely wrapped - sweaty condensation is the enemy of your pastry shell.

Other tips: if you don't have the right pastry tip for piping the choux paste, just use a zip-loc type bag and cut off a corner. I found that about a 1 inch diagonal cut will give you a nice fatty eclair. And be sure and make plenty of pastry cream, you don't want to have to skimp on the filling.

Net result: delicious! Not bad at all for a first try, and I want to make them again. Happy wife, happy brother and sister-in-law-to-be, Happy Valentine's Day!