Lil squidie foodgie things.

1. The ending preposition "off" has infiltrated the language of home-cooking for good, it seems--from the restaurant world. Hear it all the time now. "Bake these off"--"sear these off." "Make them ahead, then cook them off at the last minute." Repercussions?

2. I am willing to bet a very large amount of money that increased rates of diabetes in this country can in many cases be traced directly back to the "low-fat" craze of the 90s. When processed food was de-fatted, enormous amounts of sugar were added to compensate.

3. Banquet "Crock Pot Classics": isn't this an awfully defeatist product? Meat and veggies that have been processed to cook faster so that...they can be cooked slowly in a crock pot? Dehydrating to reconstitute? Raw to cooked to raw to cooked? Seems redundant. Futile. Wouldn't you rather put a carrot in a crock pot than a pre-cooked carrot in a crock pot?

4. The Recipe Book of the Mustard Club that I recently got (penned by Dorothy L. Sayers and allegedly also her husband; maybe some others at Benson's advert agency) turns out to be more than just a Sayers curiosity: it's a decent little cookbook! Has a lot of sound ideas and methods. Granted, it also has lots of anachronistic dishes like Jugged Hare, Roast Bacon, Bread Sauce and Alderman's Walk (I'm loving this stuff), but in general it's a solid little book. The real testament to this: Rather than filing it with other Sayers books, I'm actually going to keep it in the kitchen with the COOKBOOKS. The recipe for Welsh Rabbit is kind of genius. And I really want to try "Ham in Hades"; the receet ends: "If he doesn't like it--get a divorce."

5. A lovely, fiscally manageable indulgence: good butter. I've been living with a lil block of Lurpak Danish butter the last couple of weeks, and it is great with pasta, toast, eggs, whatever. DEElish. It makes me remember the best butter I ever had, which was at one of the Bartolotta restaurants in Milwaukee, at a wedding, and it was astonishing what an effect it had (gastronomically and otherwise!). Unbelievable! One of those Things.

And just to prove that I don't love quite *everything* MFK Fisher (wait--did you ask?) I am going to post my recipe for Oeufs Brouillés à la mode de Non, um, Pêcheuse. Good Butter is key here, as is borrowing from the style of/ her prose directly ("lump of butter"--hello).

THE BEST WAY TO COOK SCRAMBLED EGGS
In Me 'Umble O.
(The Anti-Fisher Egg)

Begin by beating 2/3 eggs in a bowl with some salt and pepper with a fork. You want to work thoroughly and carefully, breaking the yolks, incorporating as you go, working and flicking the wrist so as to rise to the challenge--never, however, racing through the process and creating excess foam. Incorporating whites and yolks is not an automatic process; they don't want to naturally emulsify. You must work and work and build and gradually get them really well-incorporated, evenly-colored, changing your angle of attack so that you're not sending the same unincorporated whites around and around in a path through the yolks. I add a little water to the bowl, maybe a Tbsp. or two. The salt in the S&P also helps break down the eggs (try salting a raw egg yolk sometime with a salt shaker that has an unsafely attached top--you'll see). You will probably need a bigger bowl for this than you think.

In the interim--more or less once you've started beating the eggs, but not rushing it--heat a clean big pan very hot. I like to use my copper fish pan and my gas burner on furnace blast. As the pan is heated (again, very hot, but not too hot), add a lump of butter and swirl it around as it sizzles and melts. I like salted butter.

As soon as the butter has stopped sizzling, at that very identifiable moment--that sudden silence, the caesura, before it gets geared up to start browning, but don't you let it--give the eggs which you've been keeping mixed with fitful stirs of the fork a final flick and pour them in. That is the moment to do it. The noise will start again. Sizzle sizzle. Immediately begin pulling down the cooked egg from the sides and bottom of the pan with a spatula or some implement, incorporating the curds with the uncooked egg.

Work fast but not frantically, keeping pace with the rapidly cooking egg. In less than 30 seconds you will be done--perfect Eggs à la Liz are done in enough time for the pan handle to not even get too hot to touch. Keep stirring up the eggs, working to that moment where the eggs are ALMOST all coming together. At that point turn off the heat with a sassy twist of the wrist, and let the residual heat of the pan do that last bit of cooking as you stir, to that exact moment just on the other side of liquid--when there is no runniness in the egg, just soft, perfectly cooked curds.

This technique is guaranteed to result in very fluffy, hot, flavorful, not in any way nastily over- or undercooked eggs, the kinds with either too nutty, cooked-smelling brown bits (blech) or runny gross melty eggy liquid (blech). They are perfect with piping hot buttered toast (or on it), or with a salad. Also good with a little Parmesan folded in, or herbs. Somehow I like them plain best of all, though.

As with all good recipes, this has converted a few people. Can't guarantee it, though.

~ fin ~

~ hic ~

p.s. These scrambled eggs take about 28-1/2 minutes fewer than Fisher's.