Lara Ferroni - Put an Egg on It: 70 Delicious Dishes That Deserve a Sunny Topping

Copyright 2013 by Lara Ferroni
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Sasquatch Books
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Editor: Susan Roxborough
Project editor: Michelle Hope Anderson
Design: Anna Goldstein
Photographs: Lara Ferroni

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57061-879-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-57061-880-2

Sasquatch Books
1904 Third Avenue, Suite 710
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 467-4300
www.sasquatchbooks.com

v3.1

Thanks to all chefs who crown dishes with eggs, especially Sunshine Tavern, Fried Egg Im in Love, Sitka & Spruce, and Wafu. It makes me hungry to even think about your deliciously sunny dishes.

Thanks to Cameron for the great title suggestion, which brought clarity to my egg book vision. There was a pony in there.

Thanks to Maura Greenblum for her tireless recipe testing and all the honest feedback. I hope that you still love to eat eggs after so many recipes in such a short time!

Thanks to Nicole Rejwan for her wonderful assistance in the cover photo shoot. It was always a joy to have you in the studio!

Thanks to Phoenixs egg farm for humanely raising chickens and making such delicious eggs available at my local market.

Thanks to Susan, Michelle, Anna, Christy, and the gang at Sasquatch for helping me share my love of eggs with everyone.

It never fails. When I look at a menu, my eyes magically zoom to any dish where an egg appears. You might, if you listen closely, even hear a little oooo escape my lips. (OK, maybe you dont have to listen that closely.)

This love of mine started with New Mexicanstyle enchiladas. If you dont have family from New Mexico, you might think an enchilada is a rolled tortilla doused in cheese and salsa and baked into almost a casserole. Not that theres anything wrong with that. Its just not what I call enchiladas. In New Mexico, enchiladas are fresh corn tortillas very lightly fried, then dunked into hot red or green chile sauce and placed flat, not rolled, on a plate. Toppings are usually as simple as freshly grated cheese and chopped onion, with another fried and dipped tortilla on top, continuing a few times to create a pancake-like stack of chile-soaked goodness. The whole thing is heated very briefly to melt the cheese, and thenthis is the most important parta perfectly fried sunny-side up egg is placed on top. As you slice, the egg spills into the chile, creating a luscious, gooey mix. Its one of my favorite combinations, and its just not the same without the egg.

Still, it was many years before I thought adding an egg to sandwiches or pizza was a good idea. I dont quite remember what prompted it, but I do recall vividly that I was sitting in a plaza in Rome when I finally decided I should try an egg on a pizza and discovered what Id been missing all those years. Just like the enchiladas, the egg added a whole new level of yum. That moment must have flipped some hidden switch in me, because from then on, I became a complete egg fanatic. Fried egg tacos? Yep. Grilled cheese and egg? You betcha. Fried rice crowned with a sunny-side egg? Can you add another?

Now a hot bowl of soup with an egg lightly submerged brings a smile to my face. My eyes light up when cocktail menus include flips and fizzes with floating egg foams. Even desserts seem to shine just a bit more when topped with a billow of meringue.

And so, after years of gushing to my friends and family about my love of an egg on top, jotting down little notes about things that would be even better with eggs, and snapping quick photos on my phone of inspiring eggy dishes at my favorite restaurants, Put an Egg on It was born. These seventy egg-inspired dishessome fancy-pants and some about as lowbrow as you can get without deep-frying Twinkiesare some of my favorites.

As much as my apartment balcony may be a great place to urban-farm, Im pretty sure my landlord (and neighbors, and husband) wouldnt be happy if I extended that idea to include chickens. The best I can do is to get my eggs at the farmers market. There I can actually talk to the farmer who raised the chickens (and even go see them at the farm!). Im blessed to live in Portland, where my local Saturday market has many egg vendors, including those that sell duck eggs and even quail eggs. If thats not an option for you, youll have to brave the grocery aisle.

Ive been known to stand in the grocery store for many minutes staring at the egg display. Its frustrating; some eggs are free-range but come from hundreds of miles away; some are local, but theres no indication of how the birds were raised. How do you choose?

If possible, I try to buy local, pasture-raised, organic eggs. If I have to compromise, Ill get local, pasture-raised, nonorganic ones, as many times the lack of organic status is more bureaucratic than anything. Local farmers humanely raising their chickens arent likely pumping them full of nasty chemicals. If I cant find local eggs, then I try to find the closest I can that are still humanely raised. However, dont put too much faith in claims like naturalor even, unfortunately, cage-free. Those terms dont necessarily mean happy chickens.

Brown, white, or blue? It really doesnt matter! The eggs will all taste the same and have the same nutritional content if the chickens are raised in the same conditions. If the same brand offers both white and brown, theres really no reason to spend the extra money on the brown.