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A review by emiged
Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World's Most Versatile Ingredient by Michael Ruhlman
4.0
With eight hens in our backyard, it's a rare day when my boys don't gather at least six eggs. They have a few regular customers who buy a dozen every couple of weeks, but more often than not we have a couple of full egg cartons sitting on the shelf in our frig. When I heard an NPR brief about a new cookbook all about eggs, I knew I had to take a look.
Michael Ruhlman has written a 220+ page love letter to this "Rosetta stone of the kitchen." Organized by a flowchart indicating how the egg is used - whole, separated, in the shell, out of the shell, just the yolk, just the white - this cookbook explores the myriad of uses for the humble egg. Starting off simply, with a basic hard-boiled egg, Ruhlman describes all of the variables that factor into the finished product and all the options of how to get there. Did you know you can bake an egg in the shell to "hard-boil" it? Or cook it in the ashes of a fireplace? Or in a pressure cooker? (The best method to make them easy to peel, as it happens.) Nonetheless, Ruhlman recommends this straightforward method:
Simple, right? And I've had perfect results every time.
Then there's soft-cooked eggs and - I learned a new vocabulary word - mollet eggs (in which the white and part of the yolk are solid but the yolk's center is still fluid), deep-fried eggs cooked by cracking an egg into boiling oil and shirred eggs baked in direct heat instead of a boiling liquid. And that's just the beginning.
To read the rest of this review, visit Build Enough Bookshelves.
Michael Ruhlman has written a 220+ page love letter to this "Rosetta stone of the kitchen." Organized by a flowchart indicating how the egg is used - whole, separated, in the shell, out of the shell, just the yolk, just the white - this cookbook explores the myriad of uses for the humble egg. Starting off simply, with a basic hard-boiled egg, Ruhlman describes all of the variables that factor into the finished product and all the options of how to get there. Did you know you can bake an egg in the shell to "hard-boil" it? Or cook it in the ashes of a fireplace? Or in a pressure cooker? (The best method to make them easy to peel, as it happens.) Nonetheless, Ruhlman recommends this straightforward method:
Put cold eggs in a pan in one layer, cover them with water by about 1 inch, and put the pan over high heat. When the water comes to a full boil (at least 209F), cover the pan, remove it from the heat, and let it sit for 15 minutes. Remove the eggs to an ice bath (half ice, half water) until they're completely chilled, at least 10 minutes but preferably longer, giving the water a gentle stir every now and then to keep the cold circulating.
Simple, right? And I've had perfect results every time.
Then there's soft-cooked eggs and - I learned a new vocabulary word - mollet eggs (in which the white and part of the yolk are solid but the yolk's center is still fluid), deep-fried eggs cooked by cracking an egg into boiling oil and shirred eggs baked in direct heat instead of a boiling liquid. And that's just the beginning.
To read the rest of this review, visit Build Enough Bookshelves.