Here in Minnesota, the weather has turned very suddenly to Fall. On Thursday, I was at the State Fair on a 95-degree day, eating chocolate-covered bacon, fried pickles, cheese curds, craft root beer, beer-on-a-stick, and fried apple pie. The next day, the temperature had dropped by at least 20 degrees, and now nighttime is cold enough that I’m thinking it might already be time to pull my comforter out of the closet.

But while I love Fall here in the Midwest — I venture to say that it dwarfs the beauty of East Coast Fall — I’m not quite ready to say farewell to summer yet. After a late start, produce is still coming into the farmers’ markets here, and I’m trying to squeeze out a few last bites of the bounty.

Which brings me to these eggs, which taste like a mouthful of summer. I know that everyone waits for tomatoes and corn and strawberries, and I love those, too, but for me, the best part of summer might be the basil. Basil, basil everywhere. Basil that is so cheap at the market for such a big bunch that it’s hardly worth taking up space in the garden. Basil that will keep for days and days in a jar of water, making everything around it fragrant.

I love deviled eggs, but I had never tried to make them before. I had always heard that they were an excruciatingly time-consuming process, which must be a myth perpetuated by delis and caterers everywhere. Because I’m here to tell you, my friends, they’re not! They’re not exactly easy or quick, but they’re not excruciating, either, even with the extra garnishes here.

And let me tell you about the garnishes here. I think this quick basil mayo may have changed my life. Used to making aioli from scratch, I was looking down my nose at it a bit, but I was cooking a lot of other things, so I thought why not. And it was remarkable.

I used the leftover mayo on everything — grilled cheese sandwiches, spread on toast with tomatoes for breakfast — and it kept just fine in the fridge for about a week, which was as long as that test could go before it disappeared. Before the basil disappears entirely, I’m planning to make a jar or two, and see how long they’ll keep in the fridge. The better question, though, might be how well I can restrain myself from eating it all immediately.

Deviled Eggs with Basil Mayo and Fried Capers

Adapted from Molly Wizenberg at Orangette

Serves about 4 as a pre-dinner snack

Ingredients

- 6 large eggs

- ½ Tbsp. olive oil

- 1 Tbsp. jarred capers

- 3 Tbsp. mayo

- ½ Tbsp. Dijon mustard

- ¼ tsp. lemon juice

- pinch of salt

- 1 recipe Basil Mayo, below

1. Hardboil the eggs. The way I do it: put the eggs in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil; turn off the heat; cover the pot; let sit approximately 10 minutes. Drain immediately and rinse with cool water (or put in a bowl of cold water).

2. When eggs are cool enough to handle (preferably fully cool, but we all know how timing goes), peel and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out the yolk into a medium bowl. Add mayo, mustard, lemon juice, and salt to the yolks. Using a fork, mash everything together. Taste and adjust as needed.

3. Heat oil in a skillet. Add capers (fish them out of the jar so they’re not super liquidy). Fry until they are starting to split and get brown. Remove from pan onto a plate lined with paper towel.

4. To assemble eggs: Arrange egg whites on a platter. Spoon filling into a sandwich-size Ziploc. Cut a small bit of the corner off (opposite the zip part). Now you can squeeze the filling into the egg whites, as if you have a pastry bag. Fill egg whites with yolk mixture. Put a dollop of the basil mayo on each, and finish off with a fried caper or two.

Quick Basil Mayo

Adapted from Molly Wizenberg at Orangette

Makes a little more than ½ cup (you will have some leftover)

Ingredients

- 2 Tbsp. olive oil
- ¼ cup packed basil leaves
- ½ tsp. lemon juice
- 1 medium garlic clove, pressed
- pinch of salt
- ½ cup mayonnaise

1. Put olive oil, basil, lemon juice, garlic, and salt in a blender or food processor. Process until mixture is smooth, scraping down the sides if needed.

2. When mixture is smooth, combine with mayo.

Potato salad is one of those dishes that — like coleslaw — befuddled me for a long time. So mayonaissey! So gloppy! So textureless! But it doesn’t have to be that way. In the last year or so, I’ve come around to both coleslaw and potato salad, to the point where I now actually (shamefully?) even enjoy the gloppy versions on rare occasions (as an accompaniment to a 3 am sandwich and fries at the 24-hour diner across the street? sure.). Making either coleslaw or potato salad yourself, though, yields such exponentially greater results than buying it. Not only oodles more for your buck, but also something actually worth eating (and sharing).

For my first potato salad, I had various fancy ideas (bacon? toasted walnuts?), but when I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, I knew I had to make it. It comes from Rosanne Cash, Johnny Cash’s daughter, which somehow makes it irresistible. As do the chunks of pickles (much-commented upon and much-appreciated by the Southerners at the bbq), and the general low quantity of mayo. I like a little bite to my potato salad, so I upped the red onion and vinegar (doubling each); you can bring them back down if you want something a little more mellow.

Next up, Eudora Welty’s potato salad. (Kevin also wrote about a recipe for warm potato salad with goat cheese that sounds divine, if not as portable.)

Oh, and note: I found that the leftovers tasted absolutely fine (everything still perfectly crunchy) after being in my fridge for a day. If anything, the flavors may have melded together even better. So, possible to make ahead.

Rosanne Cash’s Americana Potato Salad

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, originally from Bon Appetit

Serves at least 8

Ingredients

- 3 pounds medium red-skinned potatoes, unpeeled, scrubbed
- 8 dill pickle spears or a handful of cornichon, coarsely chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
- 3 celery stalks, chopped (about 1 cup)
- 1 medium red onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
- 3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled, chopped
- 2/3 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons minced fresh dill

- Salt and pepper to taste

1. Cook potatoes in large pot of boiling salted water until fork-tender, about 30 minutes. (You can also cut up the potatoes before boiling – it will take much less time…I’m not sure if there’s any downside, in fact.)
2. Drain and cool, then cut potatoes into chunks and transfer to large bowl. Stir in pickles, celery, onion, eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar, and dill. Season potato salad to taste with salt and pepper.

Cooking with other people is one of the great joys of my life, and one that happens all too infrequently here in Minneapolis, what with grad school schedules and budgets and kitchen sizes. While I adore my apartment, it has a narrow, narrow kitchen — perfect for one, less perfect for anymore than one. And so, here, I typically cook for others, which is nice, too, but lacking a little of the love that is sitting around a table chopping and grating and chatting while things bubble.

These “chiles rellenos” were one of the rare occasions in which a couple hours were taken, a grocery adventure was made, chatting was chatted, and beer drinking was commenced, all with the company of wonderful friends and cooks. I had thought about proposing for real chiles rellenos — the kind that you roast, then stuff, then bread, then fry — but that seemed a bit excessive for a first communal cooking effort. This chiles rellenos casserole — “lazy chiles rellenos,” according to the Pioneer Woman (whose recipe this is) — fit the bill: a low-stress recipe, which means that more time could be spent on the chatting and beer-drinking and less on the chopping and stirring.

“Lazy” Chiles Rellenos

Adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 8 whole roasted, peeled, and seeded green chiles (we used poblanos)
• 1-½ cup Monterey Jack cheese, grated
• 5 whole large eggs
• 2 cups whole milk
• salt and black pepper to taste
• ½ teaspoons paprika
• ¼ teaspoons cayenne pepper

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Mix together eggs, milk, salt, pepper, paprika and cayenne.
3. Cut chilies in half and add a single layer of chilies on the bottom of a 9 x 13-inch baking dish. Top chilies with half the grated cheese. Repeat with another layer of chilies and another layer of cheese. Pour egg mixture all over the top.
4. Place into a larger baking dish or rimmed baking sheet. Pour in 1/2 inch of water and bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until completely set.
5. Cut into squares and serve with warm tortillas, black beans, salsa, guacamole, so on and so forth.

“We who approach our kitchens with ham-fisted dread must defy the Alexes of this world–those breezy souls who can reach into cupboards, rifle among the cereal boxes, and come back forty minutes later with a plate of Tunisian lambs’ jowls heightened with pomegranate seeds. Like seasoned gigolos, such people know only of success, repeated every night with subtle variation; they talk of “mastering” the art of cooking, whereas most of us are lucky to be its slaves, scalded and swearing, doomed to tiptoe along the verge of failure. They are the kings of time, too, wisely marinating their salmon for twenty-four hours, already savoring the triumph to come, while we splash on the fish sauce, the lime juice, and the tarlike lees from the bottom of the soy bottle, poke the flesh for ten minutes, and then, as much from boredom as famine, head for the stove.” – Anthony Lane.

Oh, yeah. And I made a tortilla…

That lengthy quote is from the New Yorker’s food issue that came out in November. I’d set it aside for a rainy day, and finally came back to it on a snowy one. If by some chance you’ve still got that issue kicking around, I highly recommend it, as I think it’s the best food issue of the last five years. The quote is from a short piece by Anthony Lane on eggs. The “Alex” that he’s referencing is a character from a T.S. Eliot poem who is able to throw together complete, delicious meals from whatever he finds in the pantry.

You know these people, and you’re jealous of them. At least I am. That sort of off-the-cuff ease with which I’ve seen people throw together spontaneous meals is a skill I desperately want to develop, but one that I also find elusive. Part of it is experience–I find this kind of cooking easier now than I did two years ago–and part of it is what kind of stuff you’ve actually got in the cupboard. But I think some of it is just unlearnable, and I doubt I’ll ever really be an Alex of this world, no matter how long I cook.

But in some ways, that just makes it all the more satisfying for us non-Alexes when we pull off an Alex-like success, as I did last weekend. Foraging through my fridge on Saturday morning, I came across a container full of the truly awful fries I’d ordered at a diner the night before. Why had I saved them? God only knows, but I was glad they were there, as they gave me an idea. Why does a tortilla espanola have to start with raw potatoes? Wouldn’t these starchy, bland fries make the perfect base?

I started, as is often the case, by sauteing some onions:

And meanwhile, I cut up the fries:

After the onions were nice and soft, I added in the potatoes to warm and beat three eggs in a large bowl. Once the potatoes had heated, I dumped the potato/onion mixture into the eggs and added salt and pepper as well as some shredded cheese that I had found tucked away on a back shelf. (Why not?) I added some fresh oil to the pan, and dumped the potato/onion/egg mixture back in. I waited for it to set (5-10 minutes) and then used a plate to flip it, but you can also throw it in the oven to finish, provided you’re using an oven-safe frying pan.

Alex would have been proud. Or maybe disgusted. I don’t care. Screw Alex, this was breakfast.

The traditional method for clearing out an overly full fridge is making soup. I guess this makes sense, but my mind doesn’t work as well when it comes to improvising liquid-type matter, and so I usually stick to omelets. You can put almost anything in an omelet! You cannot, however, put stale bread in an omelet, and that’s how I came to make savory bread pudding.

About a month ago, I went on my MFA retreat, and came back with a strange array of leftovers, most of which were ingredients I had not brought in the first place, but ended up with because of a last-minute stroke of guilty responsibility that led me to go around to all the cabins and clean out the fridges, leaving me with a disproportionate amount of Swiss cheese (two deli-style packages of slices), eggs (2 1/2 cartons), and — to my chagrin — hot dog buns (two bags).

I don’t really eat hot dogs. I will occasionally, but something about them has never appealed to me very much, and certainly not enough that I needed two bags of hot dog buns. So I put them in my fridge, and found them staring at me sadly every time I opened it for something…that I like better than hot dogs. I was about to give up and just put them in the freezer, when I had a stroke of genius.

I remembered Kevin’s encouragement about the impossibility of screwing up bread pudding, and I thought that hot dog buns should work as well as any other bread. When it came to the recipe, though, I was a bit stymied. I knew I wanted to make a savory one, not a sweet one. Hmm. I also wanted to use some tomatoes that were getting puckery and a surplus of leftover herbs. I also wanted greens and some pork, so I bought those (but that’s it). The main question was how to combine everything, but after reading a few blogs and recipes I came to this very foolproof formula for savory bread pudding:

Savory Bread Pudding, of Your Own Design

Ingredients

- stale bread, torn into little chunks (I used hot dog buns, which some people on the Internets profess to be the best for bread pudding…it was actually a little too moist in the end for my taste, but you can experiment)

- eggs

- milk (half and half or a mixture of whole milk and cream would probably be best, but I only had soy milk in my fridge and nothing terrible happened)

- onion, peeled and chopped

- cheese

- other ingredients: ground meat, tomatoes, greens, corn, herbs…the list goes on and on (I even threw some radishes in mine)

1. Put bread in a large bowl. Say you use 12 oz. of bread (about a large loaf, and per Kevin’s recipe). Then you’ll want about 5 eggs and 2 1/2 c. of milk. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, and pour eggs and milk over bread. It is not the end of the world if you don’t have those quantities; you just want the liquid to cover the bread. So if you have less milk and more eggs, or vice versa, just up the amount of the other (things may become more or less custardy in response). Let soak about half an hour.

2. Meanwhile, cook everything else. Start by heating a little oil in a skillet and sauteing the onion. Then add whatever else you’re putting in, in order of time needed to cook. For mine, I did: onion, then ground pork, then sliced radishes, then kale stems (chopped), then kale leaves. I threw in some herbs at the last minute over heat, and then I added the tomatoes when the pan was off the heat. Season with salt and pepper (maybe overseason a little, because you’re adding it to all the unseasoned bread).

3. Preheat oven to 350º F.

4. By now, bread should be done. Add the pan of cooked stuff to the bowl of soaked bread. Mix.

5. Grease a baking pan. Pour bread/stuff mix into baking pan. Cover with grated or sliced cheese (I didn’t cover mine completely in the pic above, but you can). Grease one side of a piece of aluminum foil, and cover the pan, greased side down.

6. Bake for 15 minutes, then remove foil. Bake for another 10-15 minutes or until heated all the way through, cheese is melted, and things are maybe bubbling a bit.

Besides being Yom Kippur (otherwise known as the most important day of the Jewish year), today is also a big day because it’s the day I finally fulfilled my good Jewish girl destiny and made a kugel for the very first time.

What is a kugel? A kugel is basically a giant barge of a casserole that only a hearty Jewish grandmother could come up with. The basic equation is starch + cheese + egg = deliciousness. The thing about kugel (as opposed to, say, mac and cheese, or potatoes au gratin) is that there is usually a sizable amount of sugar in there, too, making the dish eligible to be either a side dish or a dessert.

Like many things I write about here, kugel never really appealed to me before I made it myself. It often appears at buffets as a gummy, overly sweet brick. Make it yourself, though, and you’ll see that it is in fact a wonder of creation, so rich, so delicately sweet, so incredibly buttery that one serving alone will give you something to atone for — in the form of running — for at least a week.

After much googling, I settled on Deb from Smitten Kitchen‘s recipe for kugel, which really is probably where I should have just gone in the first place, since Food Junta has such a food blog crush on her. It’s her Mom‘s recipe, which makes me love it all the more, but really I picked it because it was the simplest recipe I found. The only change I made was sprinkling cinnamon over the whole shebang, to add some color, to give some complexity to the sweetness, and because the smell of cinnamon baking for an hour or so is just heavenly. (You can see my post on baking challah last Yom Kippur for more on that.)

Next time, I think I’ll try a savory kugel. They exist, they’ve just been inexplicably bullied out of the spotlight by the sweet ones (the explanation I like best is that the sweet kugel best simulates the actual breakfast meal, which we miss today because we’re fasting). The savory one will be of my own creation, basically this one minus the sugar, plus lots of sauteed onions, plus cayenne and paprika. Mmm.

I will be serving this one with roasted potatoes, onions, and asparagus; a big salad; and, just to undo any Jew cred I got by making kugel, a curried roast pork tenderloin, with the homemade applesauce from last week. Sweet kugel is often made even sweeter by adding raisins or preserves, but the applesauce is enough for me.

(Note: Al Franken, if you’re reading this, you are more than welcome to come to my break-fast supper.)

Simplest Noodle Kugel

Makes one 9×13 inch pan of kugel

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

- 1 pound wide egg noodles
- 8 eggs
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 pounds full-fat cottage cheese, creamed or large curd
- 2 sticks (1 cup or 8 ounces) melted butter
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- Dash of salt

- Cinnamon (to sprinkle over the top)

1. Preheat oven to 350º F.
2. Bring a LARGE pot of slightly salted water to boil. Parboil the noodles (five to seven minutes – not until they are perfectly al dente, but drained once softened).
3. In a very large bowl beat eggs until fluffy. Add the sugar gradually, then the cottage cheese, margarine or butter and vanilla. Deb from Smitten Kitchen got her mixture super fluffy, with the help of a handheld beater. Having only a whisk, mine was pretty gloppy; the end results were fine, though.
4. Stir the drained noodles into the bowl, or – if your bowl isn’t big enough – you can combine the noodles and the egg mixture straight in the pan.
5. Pour into a 9×13-inch pan. Generously sprinkle cinnamon on top.
6. Bake for 1 ½ hours, or until kugel is set. You can tell if it’s set by giving it a little jiggle. Does it move way too much? Then it’s not set. The top will be very brown and a little crunchy (it’s supposed to be like that), and butter will be bubbling out the sides (maybe we could cut back on the butter a smidge…). If you’re feeling nervous about when to take it out, I’d say err on the side of caution and leave it in for 1 ½ hours – nothing terrible will happen. But ovens vary, so yours could be done as soon as an hour later.

Summer is a tough time for cookery, especially in a hot city of small kitchens. Although there’s great produce to be had, the idea of spending much time in front of the stove is unappealing to say the least.

Which is why summer cooking takes some adjustments: Nothing in the oven unless you’re able to leave the room while it’s in there, nothing that requires constant attention on the stove top, etc. This is why hearty salads – like Salade Nicoise -are such a good summer option.

Salade Nicoise is a classic French composed salad – “composed” is just a fancy work for a salad that has all the ingredients piled on top rather than tossed in – and although it does have cooked ingredients, they can be prepared in under 30 minutes. And it’s a Julia Child favorite, so – in honor of the upcoming movie that I can’t decide whether or not I want to see – here it is:

Although you’re probably better off not incorporating “composed salad” into your daily vocabulary, I definitely advise against tossing this salad. It’s nice to be able to get a forkful of whatever you want while you’re eating this, and when everything in this salad gets mixed together, it can actually be a little overwhelming.

My method for hard-boiling eggs: Place eggs in pot of cold water. Bring water to a rolling boil, then immediately turn off heat. Leave eggs alone for 8-10 minutes, then run under cold water to stop cooking. You can also boil eggs this way in an electric kettle, which is very handy as they shuit themselves off. Experiment with different times to get the level of hardness you want. Overcooking hard-boiled eggs is far from the end of the world, but the yolks do start to get chalky and dry and the whites a bit rubbery.

The exact ingredients in a Salade Nicoise are a popular topic of debate in France, where that sort of thing is socially acceptable. Common ingredients other than what I’ve used here include anchovies, sardines, capers, and tomatoes. The vinaigrette I used below included fresh basil because we had it, but whatever vinaigrette you like will work. I would recommend including mustard, though, as it goes extremely well with the potatoes and the eggs.

Salade Nicoise

Components: Lettuce, tuna, eggs, green beans, potatoes, olives (Nicoise if you’ve got ‘em).

Here’s how I would do prep to keep stress to a minimum

Depending on whether you are methodical or not, this salad can take you twenty minutes to put together or an hour and a half. Here is how I would order things:

1. Place two pots of water on the stove. Put eggs in one. Bring both to a boil.
2. Rinse green beans and remove ends. Chop in half if desired.
3. Scrub and cube potatoes.
4. Right about now, the pots should be boiling. Turn the heat off on the egg pot and toss the green beans in the other. Make note of the time or set a timer for the eggs.
5. Wash the salad greens.
6. The green beans should be ready about now.  I like them still relatively crisp if I’m using them in a salad. Keep in mind that they will continue to cook unless you dunk them in cold water. Remove them from water using a slotted spoon and leave the water boiling.
7. Add cubed potatoes into the boiling green bean water. Depending on the size of your cubes, they should cook in around 15 minutes.
8. Now the eggs should be ready. Take them out and run them under cold water or dunk them in ice water. Peel and slice.
9. Now you can start assembling while the potatoes cook. Jut pile all of the above onto the salad greens along with canned tuna – or fesh cooked tuna if you’ve got it – and the olives.
10. If the potatoes are done, remove them to drain before making the vinaigrette. If not, remove them after.
11. Vinaigrette: Shallot, olive oil, lemon juice or a light vinegar, chopped fresh basil, salt and pepper. Or whatever you like.
12. “It’s fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That’s what human life is all about – enjoying things.” – Julia Child

Egg salad is another thing (like coleslaw) that I thought was pretty disgusting until I made it myself. And then I realized that it’s delicious — and easy, and cheap. And endlessly variable. Here are some guidelines: egg salad is best when it’s freshly made, slightly warm, not too mayonnaisey, and served open-faced on a piece of toasted bread. It needs something a little acidic, something a little onion-y/crunchy, and a little spicing.

Another guideline: Egg salad likes to have other things mixed into it, or eaten on top or alongside it. Consider egg salad your canvas! I have listed a couple suggestions for toppings and side munchies below, which I’ve distinguished by whether you want to put them directly on top of your sandwich and eat altogether in one bite (toppings) or whether you want to eat between bites of sandwich, for a change of flavor/texture (side munchies). Side muchies can, I suppose, also be toppings, depending on how adventurous you are.

And, as the last feather in egg salad’s cap of endless flexibility, it should be noted that it can serve as any of the three meals of the day: a savory breakfast, a quick lunch, or a light supper. So get crackin’.

Endlessly Variable Egg Salad

Serves 1, heartily

Ingredients

- 3 eggs

- 1 Tbsp. mayonnaise

- a tablespoon or two of some kind of crunchy, onion-y thing (chives, green onion, red onion, shallots)

- dash of something acidic (lemon juice, white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar)

- salt and freshly ground black pepper, plus a couple sprinklings of any number of other spices (paprika, cayenne, crushed red pepper, dill, tarragon)

- good bread, preferably with raisins or cranberries and/or walnuts (some added texture), toasted

- toppings (if desired) can include but are not limited to: fresh or sun-dried tomatoes, anchovies, sardines, sauerkraut, etc.

- side munchies can include but are not limited to: figs, cheese, olives, celery, carrots, etc.

1. Boil eggs: bring a medium pot filled with 2-3 inches of water to boil. Carefully place eggs in pot, cover pot with lid slightly ajar, and let boil for 8-10 minutes.

2. Drain and cover eggs with cold water for 1-2 minutes to cool. Peel eggs and place in small to medium sized bowl. Mash with back of fork until mostly smooth but with noticeable chunks.

3. Add the rest of the ingredients, mash a little more. Serve on top of bread, open-faced, in a composed plate.

Tortilla española with a side of purple kale

Last night I had a few friends over to bid bon voyage to a friend who is leaving town for the summer. Fired up the grill, slapped on some steaks, potatoes au gratin, wine, dessert – the works. However, this morning one thing became clear – my graduate student “income” handles treating friends to a steak dinner just about as well as my head handles a bottle and a half of wine. In situations like this, I turn to my go-to, budget-easing, good-for-what-ails-ya, all-purpose meal solution – tortilla española.

Despite what my friends always think, tortilla española is not a type of burrito (so stop bringing salsa!). Rather, it is the hearty potato-and-egg concoction that Spaniards eat pretty much constantly. I learned how to make tortilla when I spent a semester abroad in Spain, where I ate tortilla at least four times a week (best on Sunday at about 2PM after a long sangria-filled night). I knew I needed the recipe.

In Spain I lived with a host family, and it was my host mother Josefa (jet black eyes, fiery dyed red hair, even more fiery temper) who taught me everything I know about tortilla. Josefa imparted the technique to me as if she were revealing a secret magic spell with apocalyptic power. Each step came with a grave warning (e.g. You can add zucchini, but NEVER EVER EVER anything else!). Yet despite Josefa’s stern admonitions I have found the recipe to be rather malleable, and I encourage you to experiment once you’ve got the basic technique.

Classic Tortilla Española

3-5 Medium size Russet potatoes
1-2 Medium onions
6-9 Eggs
Salt
Black Pepper
Olive Oil

Heat at least 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Slice the potatoes crosswise into roughly ¼ inch thick slices and put them in the pan. (You can peel the potatoes if you like, but I prefer to leave the skins on, for kicks). Next slice the onion into rings and add it to the pan. Add a little salt and more olive oil as needed to keep the potato and the onion well coated.

You should start with 2 potatoes and 1 onion and then add more as necessary. The goal is to fill the pan. Once the pan is filled, cover and turn the heat down to medium-low. Let the potato and onion mixture cook for another 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, and breaking up the potatoes with the side of a spoon towards the end. Quoth Josefa: “Cook them until the potatoes are ‘blandito blandito’ (very very very soft)” You want it to be kind of a mush. Remove the potatoes from the burner and let them cool a bit. At this point you should also add some more salt and pepper, to give it its final seasoning.

While the potatoes are cooling, beat the eggs well in a large bowl. Add the potatoes to the eggs and mix until even. Place the nonstick pan back on a medium-high burner with two tablespoons of olive oil, and add the potato and egg mixture. You might want to give it a couple of those slick omelet moves where you take some of the more cooked egg along the side and bring it to the center with a spatula and then tilt the pan to fill in the vacated space with more egg. (by the way, if anyone knows the technical term for this, let me know). Either way, let the tortilla cook for at least 6-8 minutes, until the edges are well cooked and the center has set a little bit.

Ok, so I forgot to tell you, there is a death defying tortilla flip involved in this recipe. Don’t worry, the worst that will happen is you will fling semi-cooked egg and potato all over your kitchen with your relatives watching because your mom’s pan is from the first Bush administration. Hypothetically.

Take a plate large enough to cover the top of the pan (but not too large) and place it over the pan like a lid. Holding the plate to the pan, flip 180 degrees to turn the tortilla out onto the plate, and then carefully slide it back into the pan. See? Not so hard.

Cook it for another five minutes or until the underside is done. Flip a few more times until it has formed an even, rich, brown outer coating. Cool for five minutes and serve.

Serving Suggestions:
-    Sliced on a sandwich for an easy lunch. In Spain they put mayonnaise on it, for health reasons
-    Serve over green salad with croutons, shaved onion, and a vinaigrette
-    Top with caramelized onions
-    With a side of spinach

Variations:  Josefa’s warning aside, you can do a lot with tortilla. Adding zucchini is, of course, great, but try bell pepper, or even chorizo. Shallots or leeks make interesting additions to the onions, and fresh herbs work very nicely. I haven’t experimented with cheese, but I have a hunch it would be fantastic

The sell: Low-budget, works as any meal, and lasts for many meals. Leave it out on the counter and snack on it anytime, though if you live with roommates, don’t expect it to last very long.

Despite their terrifyingly Orwellian name, the American Egg Council really did something right when they came up with that “incredible edible egg” campaign. Maybe I’m just a sucker for internal rhyme, but nearly every time I buy or cook with eggs, that little slogan runs through my head. I look at the eggs, and I say to myself, “man, these really are incredible and edible.” Yes, I really am that weird.

Not that eggs really need a slogan to be impressive. They can be cooked in about a dozen different ways, all yielding wildly different end products. They improve our sauces, boost our souffles, bind our meatloaf, and they’re the key to nearly every baked good we’ve got. Egg whites can even be used to develop photographs. Now that’s black magic if I’ve ever heard it…

And it’s a frickin’ chicken embryo! Can we take a second for how weird that is? To whip out the old cliche, imagine the first guy who said “Hey, I bet that chicken embryos are delicious!” He was probably stoned to death by his tribesman, but the third or fourth guy pulled it off, poached those poultry embryos, slapped them on an English Muffin, whipped up some Hollandaise sauce, and treated his friends to history’s first brunch. And that man’s name was Col. Samuel J.J. Benedict.

Ok, that may not be exactly true to fact. But it’s pretty likely that shortly after man first ate egg, he threw said egg into a cooking vessel and applied some fire. Had he done this in his hearth with a bit of liquid that he happened to have on hand, he would have made shirred, or baked, eggs. And now, without even the slightest risk of stoning, so can you.

I know, I know, it looks like slop again. But once more, I promise that it’s delicious. Two notes before the recipe:

1. 12-14 minutes is about the right cooking time, so just trust your clock. The eggs will also continue to cook when you take them  out. I actually overdid mine by a good bit, so they were more hard-boiled than I wanted them to be.
2. You may doubt me, but I swear to you that this dish was spectacular as cold leftovers. It was almost like some kind of Mediterranean egg salad. A great lunch to take to work.

And that’s all I’ve got. So without further ado, and with special thanks to the American Egg Council, the American Tomato Society, and the European Spinach Conglomerate, the recipe:

Shirred Eggs with Tomatoes and Spinach

1/2 pound spinach
1 small can diced tomatoes
6 eggs
1/2 cup hard Italian cheese
Salt

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and grease a 9×9 baking dish or 6 individual ramekins. Preheat oven to 375.

2. Cook the spinach for just about a minute, drain and run under cold water to stop cooking. Chop.

3. Add tomatoes and spinach to dish or ramekins along with some salt. Top with eggs, then cheese.

4. Bake for 12-14 minutes. Serve with crusty bread.