Morning, noon or night, there's something intensely satisfying about eggs. My appreciation for them started early with boiled eggs, which was a regular breakfast growing up. My dad used to draw elaborate faces on them for us, which we'd take ghoulish delight in decapitating. They were a common childhood dinner too, as the oozy yellow centres of cheese-filled jaffles. These days I most often eat my eggs scrambled - especially if I've got a bit of cream or an extra white or yolk to use up - or lately, fried in a hole cut in a single slice of bread, as per this genius blog post, which cooks both toast and egg simultaneously in a cast-iron skillet. But for a crowd, the best way to cook eggs (other than shakshuka, of course, which is equally effortless and delicious) is an omelette.
I'm not talking about delicate,
light, made-to-order numbers that will have you chained to the stovetop
in a flipping frenzy most of the morning but one big,
vegetable-packed, feta-fied, finished-under-the-grill number to cut in
thick wedges and serve with toast.
Packed with green vegetables and herbs, the salty punch of feta and soft sweetness of tomatoes, this is the sort of egg dish that works at any time of day. Have it with toast for breakfast, as a sandwich filling for lunch or with a glass of wine for dinner. If you have an egg, you are fed. If you have six, so are your friends.
A minor miracle took place while I was away. The herbs in my window box did not die. This probably had less to do with divine intervention than it did the care of the thoughtful people staying in my apartment, the change of season and copious amounts of rain Sydney received in March/April, and (almost certainly) the absence of my black thumb for a month. In any case, to celebrate, I picked a bunch, chopped them up finely, combined them with lemon zest, salt and pepper and used the mixture to coat little balls of cheese I'd made from doing no more than draining yoghurt in the refrigerator overnight. I then ate it smeared on a rye cracker with smoked salmon and it was so good. The cheese is smooth and tart, fresh and light, a lovely counterbalance to the richness of the salmon. Jarred up, submerged in olive oil, they'd make lovely gifts, or a pretty addition to a cheese board.
They'd go well with other meats too I imagine, but particularly nicely with roast pumpkin or spinach or beetroot or anything else that pairs well with goat's cheese, which this quite ressembles - except in its dreamily spreadable consistency, its pricetag (if you too have herbs growing, it's really just the cost of a tub of yoghurt and a lemon) and - of course - in the novelty of having made it yourself.
I love a good nationally televised event. The sort of thing that's an excuse to have people over for an informal meal - to eat, to drink, to shout at the screen. The Ashes have come and gone, and while I count the sleeps til next year's World Cup, I'll make do with what's on offer and last Saturday here in Australia, that was the federal election... which really in the end, was all about this pasta. It was simple, delicious and - unlike Australian politics last weekend - completely surprising.
Surprising because of how few ingredients the recipe called for and how unexpected their combination. Nuts are par for the course in pasta (pesto being case in point), but nuts with sultanas is more commonly trail mix than main course. And dried oregano, while standard in Italian cooking, isn't an obvious pairing with either of those two. But together, somehow, they work. The nuts are crunchy, the garlic fragrant and the sultanas like little bursts of sweetness perfectly complementing the salty bite of the parmesan.
A note to all of you sultana/raisin-phobes out there - I served this to one of your kind Saturday night (after first giving them the option of a different sauce, which they bravely declined) and they not only had seconds but went searching for extra sultanas at the bottom of the serving dish! What did I tell you? Surprising!
