Scrambled Eggs with Dates and Turmeric

Hi! It’s time for another recipe! This is a new recipe for me, and we’re pretty pleased with it. I think you’ll like it, too. Scrambled eggs with dates and turmeric is pretty much what it sounds like, but below I give you some tips.

If you’re wanting to put more turmeric in your diet for its purported health benefits, this is a great way to do so. At the same time, the turmeric makes the eggs look temptingly deep yellow, which is a boon if you’ve got store-boughten eggs that are otherwise rather pale.

First, however, credit where credit is due: I got the idea from one of my newer favorite cookbooks, Breakfast: The Cookbook, by Emily Elyse Miller (London and New York, Phaidon Press, 2019), where it’s called “Date Omelet” and is on page 47: “Dates are an essential ingredient in Persian cooking. The dates provide an unexpected sweetness to a simple omelet and the addition of turmeric adds a bright color and an earthy note.” (Phaidon has a really fun selection of these gigantic “[fill in the blank]: The Cookbook” cookbooks.)

. . . Yes, yes, yes. I don’t know much about Iranian breakfasts (though a friend of mine from Iran once told me that at his house, “It’s not breakfast without feta!”)—but I do know that one’s breakfast eggs can definitely go in a sweet direction with success. Among the many omelet variations commonly suggested in midcentury American cookbooks is a “jelly omelet,” which I’ve tried and found actually pretty good (though the folded-over version is a little sloppy, since the jelly or jam melts and turns into drippy syrup). And also keep in mind other sweet eggy dishes, such as French toast, and any kind of sweet custard preparation.

So, dates in scrambled eggs. In addition to turmeric, I like to add some coarsely ground black pepper, in order to further ground the dish and temper the sweetness of the dates. My version is not terribly sweet. Anyway, it’s not rocket science; you can alter it however you like. Here’s how I’ve been making it. Extra tips at the end.

Scrambled Eggs with Dates and Turmeric

• 1/2 tsp. ground turmeric
• 1 tbsp. water
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 tsp. coarsely ground black pepper
• pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp. butter
• 1/3 cup dates, chopped (approximate)

In a little bowl, stir together the turmeric powder with the water to make a smooth mixture (no lumps). Crack the eggs into a small mixing bowl, add the turmeric mixture, black pepper, and salt, and beat with a fork to combine ingredients.

Heat the butter in a nonstick skillet to coat skillet. When it starts to bubble, add the dates and sauté for a few minutes; just get them heated up and coated with the butter. Pour the egg mixture carefully into the pan; let the eggs start to set, then lift the edges with a wooden or heat-proof rubber spatula and let the uncooked eggs run underneath; push the cooked eggs gently toward the center. Fold or turn over as necessary to get them cooked.

Serving suggestion: Serve with pita, naan, or other flatbread; a chunk of feta cheese; a few oil-cured black olives.

Tips and comments:

For breakfast, Sue and I usually split a three-egg omelet, especially since we’re having other stuff with it. You can adjust quantities however you want.

Mixing the turmeric with the water, first, to form a slurry ensures that the turmeric will blend evenly with the eggs; otherwise, the turmeric can form lumps that are hard to break up with a fork or even a whisk. You don’t need that kind of hassle—it’s too early in the morning to be muttering “dang it!”

The reason for the gentle pouring and folding of the eggs is to give it a prettier presentation, with the dates clearly separate from the eggs. You can stir it all around if you want, but depending on how finely chopped your dates are, or how much they break up during cooking, it might look kind of, well, vomitous.

The nonstick skillet is a good idea, since you’re heating dates. Dates vary in texture (dryness) a lot. When heated, they can get really syrupy, and their sweet goo can really stick to a skillet, if it’s not nonstick.

Choice of dates: it’s up to you. I find this is a good use for leftover pre-chopped cooking dates (the kind that look like little nuggets that are coated with oat flour or whatever). This would also be really good with high-quality, soft dates that are only halved. Pit them, of course.

I like how the saltiness of the feta and olives plays off the sweetness of the eggs.

Extra points for making your own fresh flatbreads.

Ham in Ramekins

Hah! Just when you thought I was finished cracking you over the head with egg recipes, I found another one!

I have to say, this is a nifty idea, and impressive. And funnest of all it’s retro.

(Hmmm . . . Mother’s Day breakfast ideas~~~~!)

Unfortunately, I cannot relocate this recipe online. Gosh, it was there a few weeks ago, as a Googlebook or something, but now I can’t find it. But I did note the actual publication information, if not a Web address, so now which is more enduring?

By the way, here is a somewhat similar recipe, Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Crisps, which appeared on the cover of the February 2002 issue of Gourmet Magazine. (I remember the day that issue arrived in the mail: it was so lovely I zoomed right to that recipe and read it immediately!) The main difference with it is that instead of using ramekins, it uses a slice of ham, cooked to form in a muffin tin, as the serving vessel. Check it out—it has rave reviews—a real keeper!

The present recipe, however, is much lighter, since the eggs are whipped, and less chewy, since the ham is minced.

A lot of egg recipes take advantage of the contrast of yolk/egg—think of deviled eggs, or the “goldenrod” eggs I told you about earlier, or your basic sunny-side-up eggs, with that lovely gooey yolk to dip your toast into—and this one is in that category. However, it is the only one I’ve seen that simultaneously takes advantage of the whites’ ability to form a fluffy cloud of meringue. Fascinating!




From “Recipes for April Bills of Fare,” Good Housekeeping Magazine, vol. 56 (January–June 1913), p. 560. (Sorry folks, no hyperlinks for you; just my careful typing.)

Ham in Ramekins

Line small ramekins with a thin layer of minced ham, seasoned with chopped parsley and a little celery salt. Separate four eggs and beat the whites to a stiff froth, add one-fourth teaspoonful of salt; and fill the ramekins with this, making a slight depression in the center of each; into the nests slip the unbroken yolks. Dust thickly with grated cheese and bake in a moderate oven, just long enough to set the eggs.

A few notes: you might try different types of ham. I used “city ham,” minced to smithereens with my knife, and it stuck pretty well to the sides of my glass ramekins (you will not want to skimp on it); but then minced country ham might work better. I don’t know.

Don’t have celery salt? Neither do I. So I used my mortar and pestle to powder some celery seeds, then mixed in a tiny bit of salt. Ham really doesn’t need any salt added, though.

I tried a few samples using just a plain slice of ham, poked down into the bowl, but as it cooked it got kind of tough; I think it contrasted too much with the fluffy eggs. You don’t want to have to use a knife with this.




As I made the recipe, I wondered what was meant by “a stiff froth,” and I decided as I worked that it means a meringue—key word stiff—so I stopped beating it once the eggs just started to hold peaks.

I would consider omitting the cheese—or make sure to use a type that will stay very soft after baking and while serving. The store-brand cheddar I used got a little hard. Or maybe they sat too long as I took my pictures!

Next time, maybe I’ll try some crumbled feta or goat cheese. Or, maybe just use a light sprinkling of cheese instead of the “thick dusting” it calls for. (There’s also Velveeta, which melts so nicely, but I know you never use that stuff. Right? —Right.)

And . . . since you’ve read this far, here’s a bonus retro recipe for you, from the same place—Good Housekeeping Magazine from 1913, same article, p. 559. I haven’t made it yet, but it sounds like fun. If you try it, let me know how it turns out!

Mint Potatoes

Wash small potatoes and rub off the skins with a coarse towel, or pare and scrape them. Put into boiling water with sprigs of mint sufficient to flavor them well; and cook until done, drain and serve with drawn butter.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone! For fun, I'm just sharing some pictures with you today. A few weeks ago, Dad brought over a box of stuff that had been my grandma's; it was some of the stuff that Dad had retrieved from the house after Grandma died, and before we bought the house. He's been on a kick recently, going through old boxes. (He's been giving me more old recipes, too.)

Anyway, this was in a box from the long-defunct King Candy Company of Fort Worth, Texas. Check it out:




Inside it--on a cushion of two generations of fake-green Easter-basket grass--were Grandma's Easter decorations. Now this Grandma-belia is back at the house again.

I'm guessing these were made in Europe. Pretty cool, huh?

Here's the kicker: two of them have petrified candy inside! I guess it was too doggone pretty to eat.




The papier-maché eggs have beautifully printed interiors--like wallpaper for the candy to look at while it "incubates." This one has clover in it. Clover! Imagine that. Who gets excited about clover these days? These must be really old.




This candy has had a good long time to incubate, I'd say! Hello, Little cheep-cheep!




In addition to the paper/cardboard eggs, there are some sugar-panorama eggs, too.




When I was a kid, these used to really impress me. I could stare into the little peepholes for hours. You never know what you might see inside!




Somewhere along the line, these eggs got a little beat up. That's what happens when you keep something for like seventy-five years. If it survives one generation of kids and miscellaneous handling, chances are good the next generation will cause the injury. (No, I don't know what happened to these.) Fortunately, Grandma was not one to let a little mishap ruin her Easter. Nope, she just "repaired" the egg with a cute little sticker! See? Good as new.




There's one sugar-panorama egg that's in particularly good shape--because it's still in its original cellophane wrapper (which is rather out of character for Grandma--she was not one to keep pretty things "under wraps").




Here's the view inside that egg; cute, eh?




Spring is a time for cute things--babies--delicate little flowers--nests--little blue robins' eggs--tender green sprouts--violets--leaves that are the size of squirrels' ears--you know. I hope you've seen something somewhere today to make you go, "Awww"--because that's part of Easter, too.

Another Egg Recipe: From My Favorite “Cookbook”

Are you getting tired of egg recipes yet? I hope not, because I have one more for you. (Look, I’m trying to be timely, what with Easter coming up!) But this will be all for a while, since I ran out of eggs. (Hey, Rhoda . . . when can I pick up some more?)

The following is a very simple idea, but it illustrates one of my favorite cookbooks. I’ve raved about this book before, and I’ll probably rave to you about it again!

It’s not really a recipe book so much as it is an idea book—a gentle introduction for how to go about improvisational cooking—in a healthy and vegetarian way. If you’re not vegetarian, you can still get a lot out of this book, because it glorifies vegetables, grains, eggs, and dairy products. It’s fun; it gets your creative juices going. And it’s simple; it proves that awesome cooking doesn’t have to be complex.

It’s an excellent book for a young person just learning to do his or her own cooking. (Hmm: think graduation gift!)

The book is Tassajara Cooking, by Edward Espe Brown. When it was originally published in 1973, Brown was the cook at the Berkeley Zen Center in California. Now he’s an internationally renown chef and cookbook author.

Here’s a link for purchasing a copy. Seriously—I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It opened doors for me; it gave me permission to play around in the kitchen, to “visualize” flavor combinations. It gave me basic guidelines that I still use today.




Since I’ve been talking about eggs, and a few recipes I’ve shared have been rather, um, rich, here’s one that you can feel pretty doggone good about. It’s from the “greens” chapter, and it appears on pages 68–69 of the 1973 edition. It follows such unusual and fun-sounding creations as “Green, Orange & Mushroom,” “Spinach Goes Bananas with Sesame,” and “Spinach Could Also Go Apricot”!

Greens Get Egged On

The egg can appear or disappear, but in any case the greens are meaty.


greens – oil – salt, pepper – eggs

Sauté-steam the greens until they’re nearly done. Stir in some beaten egg or eggs. With a few eggs and lots of stirring, the eggs will blend in much like a seasoning. With more eggs and less stirring, the effect will be more omelette-like. A few teaspoons of soy sauce can go in with the eggs. If you like onions, start by sautéing the yellow kind, or sprinkle on some chopped green onion as garnish.

Pretty easy, huh? Go try it! With a handful of strawberries and a piece of bread, with or without Tabasco or salsa, it would make an awesome lunch!

Poached Eggs, Veggified

I’m still groovin’ on these lovely fresh eggs! Here’s another way to treat eggs like they’re really special, and it’s a bit healthier than “À la mode sunshine” and “eggs goldenrod”!

And if you skip the sop, this can be a low-carb breakfast, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I have to admit, this is not so much of a recipe as it is a “construction.” And it’s something you can put together easily for breakfast, especially if you have the right leftovers.

The first thing is, Heat your plates. Seriously, this little step is so helpful for breakfast foods! For me, this is easy to accomplish, since the pilot light in our vintage Maytag oven keeps it nice and toasty in there. All I need to do is set the plates in the oven first, before I start cooking. Or, if I’m really on the ball, I’ll set them in there the night before.

This recipe/construction is three things: poached eggs, cooked greens, and a tomato sauce. It’s improvisational; do it however you want. Also, I like to serve it with good, whole-grain bread, to sop up all the juices.

Poached eggs—you probably have a favorite way of making them. Here’s a link to a fairly classical approach; Sara Moulton simplifies it quite a bit; and here’s a technique “Bony-Patoots” has recently suggested. (You know whose version is the one I use!)

Figure one or two eggs per person. Cook them the night before and reheat them, or cook them last. At any rate, they should be warm when you assemble and serve the dish. I like the yolks runny!




The greens can be spinach, kale, turnip, mustard, kohlrabi, or beet greens—whatever you like, or have on hand—and you can prepare them however you want. Here’s how I make cooked kale, and it’s fairly healthy (especially if you opt for olive oil instead of bacon grease). Or you can do a full-fledged southern-style greens dish, which is traditionally packed with pork fat and sodium—so delicious! Or heck, you can prepare the greens in the Indian fashion, as palak paneer, which is zippier than the previous two.

Or to make this even more quickly, you can use frozen spinach or canned greens—just heat it up in a pan and season to taste.

For the tomato sauce, to avoid conflicting spices, I would flavor it inversely to the amount of flavoring in the greens. If the greens are spiced up somehow, then I’d just use plain cooked (or even good raw) tomatoes. But if the greens are rather plain, then I’d use a flavored marinara or spaghetti sauce (even one out of a can), or a tomato-based salsa.

It’s best to keep the greens and the tomatoes within the same ethnic flavor palette, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t try basil-and-garlic (Italian-style) tomato sauce with greens flavored with ginger, cumin, and fenugreek (as in some Indian greens recipes).

Again—serve on heated plates, or shallow bowls. Plate the greens, then the tomato sauce, then the perfectly poached eggs on top. Garnish if you want. (Crumbled feta? Some chopped fresh herbs?)

And be sure to offer some toast, biscuits, naan, whole-grain bread for sop—whatever fits.





Special thanks and an “Op Op, Hooray!” to our friend Jane Phillips, who turned me on to this yummy breakfast combo!

Eggs Goldenrod

Look, it’s another version of “à la mode sunshine”!

Yep, I’m still groovin’ on those awesome free-range eggs from my friend!

I found this in my beloved copy of The Good Housekeeping Cook Book (ed. Dorothy B. Marsh, New York: Rinehart, 1949). As with my friend’s mother’s recipe, this rich, warm dish with a white sauce and hard-cooked eggs takes advantage of the bright yellow yolks to make for a festive presentation.

Sure, you could just crumble the yolks with your fingers or smash them with a fork, as in my friend’s mom’s recipe. But in this case, pressing the yolks through a wire sieve makes them particularly fluffy. It gives them tons of volume. Definitely a unique presentation!




It takes a bit of effort to make this, especially if you don’t have the hard-cooked eggs ready-made. But I made it recently for dinner, with a bit of kiszka and a light, fresh green salad. A Stone Hill Chardonel paired well with it. Pretty darn good!




I more-or-less copy it from page 133, where it’s given as one of six variations of “Creamed Eggs.”


Eggs Goldenrod

6 hot, shelled, hard-cooked eggs
3 tablesp. butter or margarine
1 tablesp. minced onion (optional)
3 tablsep. flour
1/4 teasp. salt
Speck pepper
1 teasp. Worcestershire sauce (optional)
2 cups milk
1 tablesp. minced parsley
Toast

1. Hard-cook eggs, then peel off shells.
2. Partially fill base of double boiler with water; cover; bring to a boil.
3. Melt butter in top of double boiler over direct heat. Add onion and simmer until tender. Remove from heat. Add flour, salt, and pepper, mixing well. Add Worcestershire sauce, if desired.
4. Set top in place over boiling water. Slowly stir in milk. Cook, stirring, until smooth and thickened.
5. Cut hard-cooked eggs in halves, remove yolks. Cut whites in slivers; add to sauce. Heat; pour over toast. Sprinkle with yolks, pressed through sieve, and minced parsley.

À la Mode Sunshine

When you come into the possession of top-notch comestibles, it’s time to cook something special, something that celebrates the gestalt of that particular foodstuff, so delicious, perfect, and lovely.

Now that I have some really good eggs, I’ve been indulging in some particularly eggy recipes. Here’s one I got from an old friend who grew up in a rural area near Toledo; her mother used to make this dish for her back in the forties. It’s called “à la mode sunshine” (not “sunshine à la mode,” though I don’t know why). Its warm creaminess, and the golden rays emanating from the bright crumbled yolks, helped to make up for all those grumpy gray days that plague northern Ohio.

Also, it's a nice, and rather elegant, way to use up leftover hard-cooked eggs . . . in case you anticipate having an abundance after Easter!

(Hey, hold on a minute: I like you—so don’t eat this if you have troubles with cholesterol, okay? Make yourself some oat bran muffins instead!)


À la Mode Sunshine

You will need:

eggs
sliced bread for toasting
butter
flour
milk
salt, pepper
other optional seasonings to your taste


1. Hard-cook eggs; cool, remove shells.

2. Separate the whites from the yolks.

3. Chop the whites into fairly big chunks.

4. Mash the yolks in a separate dish.

5. Make a white sauce (per your taste). Add the whites to the white sauce. Adjust seasoning.

6. Spoon white sauce mixture onto plain (or buttered) toast.

7. Sprinkle the yolks (the “sunshine”) over the top to garnish.

Good Eggs!

One sign of spring is farm-fresh eggs! I don’t think that many Americans realize that eggs are a seasonal item. Their appearance in spring is one reason why we think about eggs at Easter.

If you stop to think about it, most birds don’t lay eggs in wintertime, and so neither do chickens—according to nature, anyway. The reason we have hens’ eggs in our grocery stores year-round is because big commercial egg farmers manipulate the photoperiod using artificial light to trick the chickens into not having any idea what day, month, or season it is! There are no calendars in commercial chicken houses.




Before farmers figured out how to fool the chickens with electric lights, and before refrigeration was available, it was a real game for people to figure out how to preserve eggs during the months when hens weren’t laying. To give you an idea of this chore, here’s a quote from The Hearthstone; or, Life at Home: A Household Manual, written by Laura C. Holloway, published in 1883:

To keep Eggs Fresh.—One of the best means of preserving eggs is the following: Select good fresh eggs and pack endwise in a mixture of equal parts of fine dry charcoal and salt (cold). Keep in a cool, dry place until required for use. A thin coating of gum or a trace of oil will prevent loss of moisture through the shell. The best time for preserving eggs is from July to September.

So anyway, there are still some chickens in this land, our land, that do natural things, like scratch in the dirt, flap their stubby wings and go clumsily airborne (as chickens do), peck at corn, strut around and cluck, nibble on grasses, capture beetles, and listen to robins singing on these fine spring mornings. And they do know what season it is: It’s the season to lay eggs!

My friend Rhoda lives in Columbia and has chickens, and now that her hens are producing again, she let it be known (Facebook to the rescue!) that she was ready for buyers again. (Note: if you are reading this and are wanting to contact her, let me know, and I’ll put you in touch. Realize—she’s not a commercial chicken farmer, so she doesn’t have a bazillion to sell.)

For my Central Missouri friends who are wondering, hers is not one of the backyard-chicken-coops that have recently become lawful in the city of Columbia (last year the city council passed an ordinance permitting it—cool, huh?)—she’s actually zoned “Agricultural.”

Anyway—what a great thing! Happy chickens, awesome eggs.

I love it that they’re all different colors, shapes, and patterns. Sometimes you want a smaller egg; sometimes you want a great big one. And the variety reminds me of the fact that each of her chickens are individuals—I don’t know if she has names for them, but they are certainly far from being anonymous, confused birds in little boxes.

Having awesome eggs makes me want to do something special with them.

Stay tuned!