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!

Leftover Greens

Namely, kale. Yesterday we talked about cooking kale. I know it’s an elementary thing, but to be honest, I didn’t grow up with cooked kale, and if my mom had made it, I probably wouldn’t have touched it. You know how kids are: anything green and wilty is questionable.

But we’re not kids anymore, and we’re trying to build sensible “food pyramids” for ourselves. Maybe you don’t cook with greens much.

So let’s say you made that kale I told you about, and now you’ve got some leftovers. Here are some of my favorite things to do with it!

1. Grilled cheese sandwich. Oh, this is easy, but if you choose good cheese and good bread, you end up with a sandwich that you’d pay, oh, $6.60 or $8.80 for at a downtown restaurant. The kale has a nutty-earthy flavor, so I’d go with a creamy or nutty cheese. Manchego, Swiss, or Monterey Jack, for instance.




2. Poached-egg breakfast. This one requires some pasta sauce, salsa, or other tomatoey sauce (which could be from leftovers, too). Top poached eggs with some reheated greens and drizzle some tomato sauce over. This is pretty darned good. And if you don’t feel like poaching eggs, soft-cooked will do just as well. (Dress it up a little with some crumbled feta? Your call.) I’m pretty sure this is Atkins-friendly, though I myself like a piece of toast for sop.

3. Colcannon soup. Well, or a quick version of this Scottish/Irish classic. This requires some leftover mashed potatoes. Easy, easy, easy: reheat the mashed potatoes, and stir in milk and butter to make a thick, creamy soup. Add the kale to the potato soup. Great for a cold day!




4. Pasta loves leftover kale, too. It can be added to any kind of pasta salad—for instance, you could take it in a “Mediterranean” direction, with Kalamata olives, feta, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers. Or whatever. You can add it to hot pasta, too.

Just ideas. I mean, you know you need more veggies in your diet, right? And aren’t you getting bored with broccoli and green beans?

Cooked Kale

Not everyone appreciates cooked greens like they ought to—I think it’s because they hated them as kids and never figured out how to “reclaim” them as adults. It bugs me when grown-ups claim to hate greens. Seriously. Think of the vitamins, folks! Think of the fiber!




If you’re reading this and “greens” seem kind of challenging, I recommend you experiment some this winter. Come on: you especially need good stuff in your diet in the winter months. I suggest starting with kale. It’s in season now. Plus, it’s pretty forgiving in the pan; it doesn’t turn into sick-looking army-green mush very quickly.

Kale’s in the cabbage group in the mustard family: antioxidants, beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, calcium, and a number of anticancer compounds. It is incredibly versatile and is one of my favorite vegetables!

I recommend a big nonstick skillet with a good-fitting glass lid. You’ll want to watch.




I suggest using about a teaspoon and a half of bacon grease. Yes. (The bacon itself, crumbled, can be optional as a garnish.) And about the same amount of olive oil. (Look: it’s just one tablespoon of bacon grease for an entire bunch of kale. And what would you have instead? Canned green beans? Frozen broccoli florets? Again?) Use all olive oil if you want, but I’m tellin ya, the bacon grease ensures that everyone will like the flavor.

A chopped-up onion, white or yellow. A chopped-up bell pepper. By the way, if you use a red bell pepper, it will make it look Christmassy.

. . . And a bunch of kale from the supermarket. Rinse it well, then get rid of the stems. Either tear the stems out of the leaves (or pick the leaves from the stems), or fold the leaves in half lengthwise and slice the stems out with a knife. (Why? Because the stems take too long to cook; just ditch them.)






Wad up the kale leaves and then slice it every half inch or so.

Up to this point, you can do everything the night before: Pack the chopped onion and bell pepper into separate sandwich bags. The kale will keep fine overnight if you splash some water onto it and store it in a bag or covered container.




The cooking goes pretty quickly once you begin. Start it just before you’re ready to serve your meal.

When you’re ready to cook, heat the oil and grease in the skillet, then, on medium-high, sauté the onions and red bell pepper until is starts getting a little done.




Then add the heap of kale. Make sure there’s a little water with it.




Then cover the skillet and cook (really, you’re steaming it) over medium until the kale wilts, is soft enough to eat, but still has good texture and—for the love of God!—make sure you stop cooking before it turns olive green.




Your goal is for it to be a beautiful jewel green. (See why I told you to use a pan with a glass lid?)




Toss it a little to make sure the onions, peppers, and kale are mixed together, and salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with some crumbled bacon if you want. Serve immediately.




I think you’ll be surprised at how well this goes with all kinds of dishes—meat and potatoes; a Creole-inspired medley of cooked tomatoes, peppers, and shrimp; chicken paprikash—heck, all sorts of stuff!

Next? Things to do with leftover kale.