Tag: egg

I have never in my life liked egg salad sandwiches.  Not that I ever had many of them.  I think part of it was probably my association of egg salad sandwiches with convalescent homes (senior citizen care centers).  I understand why it would be a popular dish in that setting.  It is a food that is soft and easy to chew, and aside from some base ingredients, one can make it as bland or flavorful as they wish.  I think the problem that I had with these sandwiches is that they never seemed to have much flavor.  Therefore, I stopped even attempting to eat them before the age of 12.

Now I have to take you back to last summer.  I live in Vegas, so it gets hot, and yes, it really does get hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.  My sisters and I tested that theory as kids when we used to spend the summers here visiting relatives.  Well, the heat does strange things to my appetite, aside from sometimes just killing it completely.  Last summer, I suddenly had the oddest craving for an egg salad sandwich.  This was completely out of the blue, as I have already explained that I had written them off as unpalatable.  Alas, I know that if I don't give in to one of my spontaneous food cravings, it will haunt me until I do, even going on for months, so I knew that I had to try an egg salad sandwich as an adult.

I try to completely avoid red and white onions in food, although I love them, but I'm allergic and it took me years to really figure it out.  Because of that, I thought it was going to be hard to find egg salad sandwiches premade at the store without onions in them, since I thought that they were usually made with onions or onion salt for flavoring.  I guess I might have been confusing the mixture with potato salad, because I found a sandwich all wrapped and ready to go at the local supermarket that was sans onion products.  I got home and hesitatingly took the first bite, not sure what to expect.  Well, this particular sandwich had basically no flavor at all.  No salt or anything.  Sure, I could add salt, but the bread was already fused to the egg salad.  I ate the whole sandwich anyway.  It did nothing for my craving.  it just so happens that my cravings are not just for a certain dish, but for the ULTIMATE version of that dish.

There was only one thing I could do.  I had to make my own egg salad sandwiches at home from scratch.  I got out two of my many general cookbooks and decided to try each version at the same time.  I made both batches and found that neither one was all that great, but definitely better than the grocery store deli version.  After storing the mixtures in the fridge in their separate bowls, and telling one of my sisters to have at them, a day later we had a little of each left, but still in bowls much too large for the new portions.  I thought, "to heck with it", and tossed them in a bowl together.  I later decided to finish off my egg salad experiments, now combined, and it turned out that when mixed together, I actually had my ULTIMATE EGG SALAD SANDWICH that I had somehow daydreamed of.  I have since started craving this occasionally, so I have made it several times.  The amount of salt you use, which is the case for any food product, is up to your own taste buds.  A helpful hint for you, though, is that the mixture will taste saltier after it is allowed to sit for awhile.  I guess that's more of a warning, as you may think you've salted it to perfection, only to find that it is much too salty after 6 hours in the fridge. 

Ultimate Egg Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients:

10 eggs

5 tablespoons mayonnaise

1/4 cup drained pickle relish (or chop up some pickles yourself)

1/3 cup celery (I think celery is nutritionally useless; although it does add a fun crunch, I usually omit it)

2 tablespoons finely chopped green onion

1 tablespoon diced pimiento

1 tablespoon mustard (yellow, dijon, etc. - whatever you'd like best)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Loaf of sliced bread (the heartier the better - adds more variety to the texture)

Instructions:

Place whole eggs (shells intact) in a large saucepan with enough cold water to completely cover them.  Bring to boil on stove.  After boiling starts, continue to boil for 15-20 minutes.  When time is up, run cold water over them until cool enough to handle.  Crack each egg and peel off the shells (I believe that I read somewhere that egg shells make excellent fertilizer for some plants, but you'll have to research that one yourself).  On a cutting board, use your favorite knife to chop the eggs up.  I prefer the egg whites to be as big as quarter-inch cubes, but it all depends on how smooth you want to mixture.  Really, this sandwich is all about you and your preferences.  How else could it be the ULTIMATE for you as well as me?  Toss the chopped eggs into a medium-sized bowl and add all of the other ingredients, in whichever order you please.  Stir well.  Spread between two slices of bread, preferably toasted first.  Cut diagonally, and enjoy.  Refrigerate the leftover mixture immediately - never take your chances with heat and anything containing mayo.  Makes about 6 sandwiches.

After looking online and not finding a chicken and dumplings recipe I liked, I tried this:

1. Saute an almost-mirepoix of shallots, celery, and carrots in olive oil; add three cubed chicken thighs and chicken stock.

2. Mix 1 1/4 cup flour with 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp baking powder, and one egg; slowly add milk until it becomes a dough and loses its stickiness.

3. Season your chicken with pepper, tarragon, onion powder, garlic powder, soy sauce, and worcestershire. Add one can cream of celery soup and a bay leaf.

4. Add the dough in teaspoonfuls; cover. After five minutes, remove cover and flip.

Simple, no? This turned out really, really awesome.

Of course, I decided to make Chicken Katsu, because it's delicious and wonderful. It all starts with chicken thighs, which I cut into manageable chunks and egg-battered with flour and panko. A few minutes in the deep fryer, and they came out delicious.

Actual people who have lived in Hawaii tell me it's not the chicken, but the sauce that makes things work. The recipe I was using has a pretty complicated sauce, and of course I added random amounts of everything instead of paying attention and got something a little too clovey.

Why did I use a recipe and not invent something myself? This time, it was because I have absolutely no clue about what the Hawaiians eat. But make the chicken part. It's fantastic. Next time, I'm eating it with barbecue sauce.

The main reason I'm posting is for the next person that searches google to try to find tvorog in Las Vegas. I searched for "Russian Market Vegas" and "Russian Market Las Vegas" and found nothing useful. Google's lies cost me $10 in wrong purchases and probably $20 more in gas. Hopefully Supercook can give me something to do with greek yogurt and bulgarian white cheese.

They don't have a web site, but their address is:
Jones Market & Deli aka Eastern European Market aka
3389 S Jones Blvd (Jones and Desert Inn, behind Winchell's)
Las Vegas, NV 89146
The girls that work there are all like hot spies.

Back to Russian night..
I made a Honey "Mousse" and Zapekanka iz Tvorog (Tangy Baked Lemon Pudding). The honey mouse was crap, so I won't even talk about it. I think maybe I needed to know something about making mousse to make it work. I blame the recipe. In fact, the recipe and the person that wrote it can assossee mayee yaitsa.

Everything everyone made was good except my honey crap. Of course mine was crap. That's right, laugh. Smekh smekhom, a pizda kverkhu mekhom, suka. Yup, fur.

Lisa's Borscht was especially surprising, because it wasn't the most disgusting thing I've ever had like I expected it to be. The kid seemed to love it.

Enough to mix with oatmeal:



My Zapekanka iz Tvorog was really good. I'm not sure if the consistency was how it should be, but it was damn tasty...
300g tvorog
Juice of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Separate the egg yolks from the whites, and beat the whites until fluffy. Blend in the tvorog , lemon zest and juice, and sugar to taste.
Pour the mixture into a small- medium sized greased ceramic baking dish.
Bake for 20 minutes.

Serve drizzled with a sauce made from the juice of one orange and a teaspoon or two of honey, warmed together.

Here's how it looked:

The Queen of Tarts is always acting all high and mighty, baking bread and cookies and I think probably even people every night. She'll casually pull out some flour and other stuff, get a bowl or something, and in twenty minutes she'll be yanking a tray of golden brown tastiness out of the oven. Her demeanor seems to say, what, bread? Oh look, here it is. Easiest thing in the world.

So, for Russian night, I decided to make a mushroom pastry. I'd show her. I'd whip up a huge plate of tasty mushroom foods and then I'd be the one who shrugs modestly. Oh yeah, those pastries? Totally easy.

I started the night before with:

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 sticks of butter

The recipe I was following told me to cut the whole thing together with a wide knife. Not knowing what the heck it was talking about, I got a butter knife and cut the mixture together while watching Bob the Builder. By the end of it, my shoulders were totally and completely sore.

The next day, I sauteed:

• 1 lb minced mushrooms
• 1 minced large onion

I added some pepper and tarragon during the cooking process, then set it aside to cool down while I pulled out the dough.

Of course, the dough didn't look right. It kept falling apart. It was impossible to roll. So I got out the pastry knife (yeah, I didn't know we had one the night before) and cut in an additional half stick of softened butter. The dough formed a nifty ball immediately. Victory for me.

I started rolling the dough out, but it was pretty sticky, and it kept tearing in places. In fact, it took me an hour to roll out, but I learned one vital fact you'll need if you ever work with dough: flour is your friend. If your dough even begins to give you lip, cover it (and your rolling surface) with flour. You cannot have enough flour on hand. It's mathematically impossible.

Once I had the dough rolled out to about a quarter inch, I cut it into squares. I mixed a cup of grated parmesan into the mushroom mixture, put teaspoonfuls of it into the squares, and folded them diagonally. After all the little triangley things were made, they were brushed with egg yolk, sprinkled with caraway seeds, and put into a 350-degree oven for twenty minutes.

Were they good? Yeah. They were good. They were pretty darn good. But I couldn't shrug and be all modest, because my shoulders might have fallen off.

For this EU Night Russian Stuffed Eggs caught my eye as they are a twist from the common Deviled Egg, which is one of my favorite appetizers.

The recipe is easy to follow and the ingredients are all quite common. My only suggestion would be to chop the onion super fine, maybe even in a food processor or Magic Bullet. I hand chopped mine and they were a bit chunky.

Thanks to chef2mom and her professional chef skills I learned the proper way to Quenelle the egg mixture and place it in the egg. You could also use a small melon baller to fill the eggs.

This recipe was interesting as it has a mayo and sour cream sauce to go with it. I ate the eggs with and without the sauce and the sauce definitely adds to the whole flavor.

Another amazing EU Night down. Hawaiian Night will be coming next month. So, stay tuned!

I don't know why nobody ever told me that Alfredo sauce was easy to make, but I've wasted far too much of my life buying the glass jars of commercially made pasta sauce when a great alfredo is almost as easy.

Just last week, we were running a little short in the food department, so it came time to try and scrounge what we could out of what was sitting around in the house. To that end, I collected the following ingredients:

• 2 cans evaporated milk (heavy cream would be better...)
• 1/8 lb. Parmigiano-Reggiano, shredded
• Lots of black pepper
• 1 stick butter
• Garlic salt
• 1 bag egg noodles

I melted the butter while the pasta started boiling. Once completely melted, I added the milk and whisked it all together, then whisked in the pepper and garlic salt. After the egg noodles were done, I drained them thoroughly, put them in the milk mixture, and began to fold in the cheese.

That's it. The best recipes are disgustingly simple. Although, after I ate the noodles, I felt like my heart was going to explode. This is some heavy stuff, friends. Don't get addicted.

Here we go! For this EU night, I decided on making Cheesesteaks. Alas, they weren't traditional, in the fact that they weren't made with Cheez Whiz (Seriously. Apparently, a hot dog vendor in Philidelphia invented cheesesteaks when he got bored with his regular faire). This is the recipe. alas. it is not exact. Why? Well because its up to you the amount of ingredients you want on the thing. Not me.

Also, note that the cut of beef required (suggested) for these is a mysterious cut known to few as "Eye of Round" Roast. In my earlier, uncertain years, I worked at a Smiths Food and Drug in the Meat department. I know quite a bit of beef from my Father and Grandfather as well, but I had never heard of this cut. I dont know why. Ask your butcher, or use a Rib-Eye steak or comparable marbled cut of beef. You can't tell the difference. Except in price, maybe, the Eye of Round is very cheap, $11 for 2.5 lbs or so. (Note: 2.5 lbs is enough to make 10 sandwiches, and thats just meat and cheese.)

2lb.      Eye of Round roast, 
          or comparable portion of 
          meat to stick in sandwiches.

8-10      Dutch style sandwich rolls (very flaky crust).

16-20     Slices of provolone cheese

?         Frenched onions, chopped bell peppers, mushrooms
          sweet cherry peppers, anything you want on there.

1         Spray bottle or mustard bottle filled with        
          clean water.

1         Bottle of Steak/Grill seasoning (optional)

Start by putting the roast, or other meat in the freezer for an hour or two. You want it frozen, but still pliable. Rock hard would be bad, and hard to cut. While its freezing, cut the vegetables, watch TV, do something.

Frozen enough? ok, get a serrated blade, yes, the type you cut bread with. What you're looking for here is to shave very thin slices of beef off of the roast. Since the beef is frozen, it should be easier to cut without tearing. After you've sliced all of the beef very thin, set it aside in a bowl. I would suggest you get a two burner cast iron griddle for this, they're good for pancakes, eggs, pretty much anything, but great for this. Lay it across one front burner and one back burner, and turn the heat on the front burner to high, and the back burner to low.

Throw a cup or so of your veggies on the front part of the griddle, and saute until desired done-ness. While this is cooking, preheat the oven to 175 degrees. If the vegetables begin to stick to the griddle, hit them with a squirt of water from the mustard bottle, it will prevent them from sticking. Once they're cooked to your liking, move them to the back of the griddle. Throw a cup of the sliced beef on there, and cook to desired doneness and again, hit with a squirt of water if it starts to stick. Once this is cooked to your liking, combine the cooked vegetables and the beef together and cook for a minute or two, blasting with water when you need to. With the spatula, form the mixture into an oval shape, and then put two slices of provolone on the oval, almost covering the meat but try to keep it off of the grill. Hit the top of the cheese with two or three squirts of water, and the steam from this will melt the cheese very very quickly.

Get one of your sandwich rolls, and cut lengthwise along one side, in the typical hot dog bun fashion. Lay the bun open side down onto the meat, and then slide the spatula underneath the entire mass. In one motion, flip the whole mess over, and you should have a Philly Cheesesteak! Yay!

I know it seems like quite a bit of work, but they are mighty tasty.

I was seriously in need of some sour cream yesterday, so I browsed the internet for a couple beef stroganoff recipes and generated something that turned out to be pretty darn fantastic.

After slicing a half-pound sirloin steak into small strips, I dredged them in flour, garlic salt, and pepper, then sauteed them in butter along with a quarter onion (diced). I added a couple dashes of Worcestershire and soy sauce (that combo is my secret weapon for meat dishes). After the onion was transparent, I added some sliced mushrooms, a shot of apple cognac (any brandy would be fine), and half a can of chicken broth. Once the whole mixture thickened, I added half a cup of sour cream, reduced the heat to medium, and let the sauce thicken.

Over buttered egg noodles, this one was pretty fantastic. There was just a hint of the apple flavor from the cognac. If I do this again, I will wait to add the steak until after the onions are done; it certainly wasn't overcooked, but I would have liked it to be a little less cooked anyways.