I thought the board members might like to see this article in the New York Times.
You have to be a member of the NYTimes to see it
, so I cut and pasted the text for convenience sake. Enjoy!
NYTimes February 7, 2007
Author: Marian Burrows
Title: What the Egg was First
Dan Barber had a culinary epiphany in Italy a couple of months ago over a plate of tagliatelle, one that sent him running back to his kitchen in an experimental mode. When he inquired about the pasta, he was told that its secret ingredient, what made it especially absorbent, were the eggs. But these were something quite different from the ordinary kitchen staples that come 12 to a cardboard carton.
Mr. Barber, the chef and an owner of Blue Hill in Greenwich Village and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills in Westchester County, had just been introduced to the wonders of eggs that are described, with varying degrees of delicacy, as immature, unborn, unlaid or embryonic. In plain English, these are eggs that have not been laid and are sometimes discovered when an elderly laying hen is slaughtered.
The chefs mind flashed back to his own farms and the 1,300 laying hens that provide his kitchens with eggs. When their production slows down they are slaughtered and sold at a farmers market as stewing hens, complete with eggs. He was embarrassed, he said, to think how he had been wasting them.
This mostly lost treat is remembered well by anyone who grew up on a farm with laying hens, or who bought chickens from an old-fashioned butcher before the advent of factory farming. Now, when the tough old birds have stopped laying they are shipped off to places like Campbells, where they become chicken soup. They are worth so little that many are incinerated, their immature eggs unharvested.
Upon his return from Italy Mr. Barber instructed his staff to start harvesting the eggs, and for two months they have been experimenting. There is a lot of trial and error in the kitchen of a creative chef, but he has deemed some of the results good enough to serve at his two restaurants. Not everybody loves them, but ever since Mr. Barber dropped the term embryonic eggs from the menu in favor of immature, fewer customers have balked.
Last week in Pocantico Hills Mr. Barber shared his experiments with me. First, several of his cooks demonstrated the process of extracting the eggs from six recently slaughtered laying hens. They drew a crowd of waiters and cooks into the kitchen with considerable oohing and aahing and cries of awesome as 30 eggs, in varying stages of maturity, were extracted.
José Dejesus, a waiter and bartender from the Dominican Republic, remembered his mother telling the butcher not to remove the eggs. I was always into their taste, he said.
Some of the eggs were the size of a miniature marble; others as large as one fully matured inside a shell. Some yolks had already begun to form the albumen, the white, and a couple, one of the farmers said, would have had a shell by the next day.
Mr. Barber tried lightly scrambling the eggs with fresh herbs from the greenhouse garden and served them in eggshells. This is what the unlaid egg should taste like: a deep, concentrated flavor, a hint of sweetness, but not overly rich. You dont get that in a full egg, Mr. Barber noted.
One of his biggest hits is a two-yolk treat. He injects the immature yolk into an ordinary egg after the egg has been barely poached using a method similar to sous vide, at very low heat for an hour and 20 minutes. The albumen coagulates but the yolk stays runny.
The two-yolk egg is topped with minced dried winter vegetables like salsify, beets and potato. It is served on a bed of sautéed spinach, the plate drizzled with a ring of black beluga lentils flavored with minced pickled vegetables. The mellow creaminess of the egg is highlighted by the crispness of the vegetables, and its sweetness plays in counterpoint to the lentils.
His next challenge was to recreate the tagliatelle that began this whole process, and on Sunday he sent an e-mail message to say it was fantastic. Im struck by the flavor of the pasta itself, he wrote, and, of course, the color, which may come with a warning to wear sunglasses when looking at it very bright yellow.
Other experiments, including drying the eggs to use as a topping like bottarga, were less successful. The flavor and texture that make the yolks so special were lost.
The collection of yolks brought back childhood memories of fighting with my cousin over who got the pureys, as we called them, after the name for miniature marbles. My aunt cooked them in chicken soup (along with the gizzard, neck and feet). Mr. Barber had one cooked for me in chicken stock and my taste memory was confirmed: tender and moist with all the deliciousness of a just-laid egg.
A vastly overcooked version of unlaid eggs is still available at Sammys Roumanian Steak House on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The owner, David Zimmerman, would not divulge his source but said he keeps the supply in the freezer.
Floyd Cardoz, the executive chef at Tabla, remembers them fondly from his childhood in India. His family would visit his great-grandmother in Goa, who raised her own chickens. Before she slaughtered them she checked for unlaid eggs, but if she missed one she would put it in the curry.
It made the dish very different, Mr. Cardoz said, and we as kids always looked in the curry to find the egg. We loved them. Maybe thats where my love for egg yolks comes from: the creaminess of yolk in the curry had incredible flavor.
Gabriel Kreuther, executive chef at the Modern, remembers them from his childhood in Alsace. When he was served one at Stone Barns, he said, it made him smile. In Alsace the eggs were a big treat in chicken soup, he said, mixed with a little cream, and as a topping for bouchée à la reine, puff pastry shells filled with chicken meat, the vegetables from the soup and a very light béchamel, with unlaid eggs on top.
They were like a condiment, like a very good olive oil on top of a salad, he said. The eggs should be treated simply because you want the flavor of the egg.
Mr. Kreuther wants them to remain a treat. I hope its not going to turn into a gimmick, and you find it on every menu.
You have to be a member of the NYTimes to see it
NYTimes February 7, 2007
Author: Marian Burrows
Title: What the Egg was First
Dan Barber had a culinary epiphany in Italy a couple of months ago over a plate of tagliatelle, one that sent him running back to his kitchen in an experimental mode. When he inquired about the pasta, he was told that its secret ingredient, what made it especially absorbent, were the eggs. But these were something quite different from the ordinary kitchen staples that come 12 to a cardboard carton.
Mr. Barber, the chef and an owner of Blue Hill in Greenwich Village and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills in Westchester County, had just been introduced to the wonders of eggs that are described, with varying degrees of delicacy, as immature, unborn, unlaid or embryonic. In plain English, these are eggs that have not been laid and are sometimes discovered when an elderly laying hen is slaughtered.
The chefs mind flashed back to his own farms and the 1,300 laying hens that provide his kitchens with eggs. When their production slows down they are slaughtered and sold at a farmers market as stewing hens, complete with eggs. He was embarrassed, he said, to think how he had been wasting them.
This mostly lost treat is remembered well by anyone who grew up on a farm with laying hens, or who bought chickens from an old-fashioned butcher before the advent of factory farming. Now, when the tough old birds have stopped laying they are shipped off to places like Campbells, where they become chicken soup. They are worth so little that many are incinerated, their immature eggs unharvested.
Upon his return from Italy Mr. Barber instructed his staff to start harvesting the eggs, and for two months they have been experimenting. There is a lot of trial and error in the kitchen of a creative chef, but he has deemed some of the results good enough to serve at his two restaurants. Not everybody loves them, but ever since Mr. Barber dropped the term embryonic eggs from the menu in favor of immature, fewer customers have balked.
Last week in Pocantico Hills Mr. Barber shared his experiments with me. First, several of his cooks demonstrated the process of extracting the eggs from six recently slaughtered laying hens. They drew a crowd of waiters and cooks into the kitchen with considerable oohing and aahing and cries of awesome as 30 eggs, in varying stages of maturity, were extracted.
José Dejesus, a waiter and bartender from the Dominican Republic, remembered his mother telling the butcher not to remove the eggs. I was always into their taste, he said.
Some of the eggs were the size of a miniature marble; others as large as one fully matured inside a shell. Some yolks had already begun to form the albumen, the white, and a couple, one of the farmers said, would have had a shell by the next day.
Mr. Barber tried lightly scrambling the eggs with fresh herbs from the greenhouse garden and served them in eggshells. This is what the unlaid egg should taste like: a deep, concentrated flavor, a hint of sweetness, but not overly rich. You dont get that in a full egg, Mr. Barber noted.
One of his biggest hits is a two-yolk treat. He injects the immature yolk into an ordinary egg after the egg has been barely poached using a method similar to sous vide, at very low heat for an hour and 20 minutes. The albumen coagulates but the yolk stays runny.
The two-yolk egg is topped with minced dried winter vegetables like salsify, beets and potato. It is served on a bed of sautéed spinach, the plate drizzled with a ring of black beluga lentils flavored with minced pickled vegetables. The mellow creaminess of the egg is highlighted by the crispness of the vegetables, and its sweetness plays in counterpoint to the lentils.
His next challenge was to recreate the tagliatelle that began this whole process, and on Sunday he sent an e-mail message to say it was fantastic. Im struck by the flavor of the pasta itself, he wrote, and, of course, the color, which may come with a warning to wear sunglasses when looking at it very bright yellow.
Other experiments, including drying the eggs to use as a topping like bottarga, were less successful. The flavor and texture that make the yolks so special were lost.
The collection of yolks brought back childhood memories of fighting with my cousin over who got the pureys, as we called them, after the name for miniature marbles. My aunt cooked them in chicken soup (along with the gizzard, neck and feet). Mr. Barber had one cooked for me in chicken stock and my taste memory was confirmed: tender and moist with all the deliciousness of a just-laid egg.
A vastly overcooked version of unlaid eggs is still available at Sammys Roumanian Steak House on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The owner, David Zimmerman, would not divulge his source but said he keeps the supply in the freezer.
Floyd Cardoz, the executive chef at Tabla, remembers them fondly from his childhood in India. His family would visit his great-grandmother in Goa, who raised her own chickens. Before she slaughtered them she checked for unlaid eggs, but if she missed one she would put it in the curry.
It made the dish very different, Mr. Cardoz said, and we as kids always looked in the curry to find the egg. We loved them. Maybe thats where my love for egg yolks comes from: the creaminess of yolk in the curry had incredible flavor.
Gabriel Kreuther, executive chef at the Modern, remembers them from his childhood in Alsace. When he was served one at Stone Barns, he said, it made him smile. In Alsace the eggs were a big treat in chicken soup, he said, mixed with a little cream, and as a topping for bouchée à la reine, puff pastry shells filled with chicken meat, the vegetables from the soup and a very light béchamel, with unlaid eggs on top.
They were like a condiment, like a very good olive oil on top of a salad, he said. The eggs should be treated simply because you want the flavor of the egg.
Mr. Kreuther wants them to remain a treat. I hope its not going to turn into a gimmick, and you find it on every menu.
