Ingredients & Fine Foods

Quail eggs : one of nature’s smallest wonders!

The beautiful thing with these teeny tiny eggs, is that they all look different, each of them with a unique half-inch of personality, random patterns of little smudges and freckles, some brown, some black, some blue.

You half expect them to crack open any minute, letting out a very small gawky dinosaur, or some other thumb-sized critter out of a fantasy.

Maxence bought a tray of them at our fantabulous and newly redecorated grocery store, where shiny bright aisles compete for your attention and unsuspected treasures of modern marketing await you at every turn.

He boiled them for four minutes, and we ate them still warm and soft inside, peeling them with the tips of our fingers, dabbing them into a little mushroom salt, and popping them into our mouths.

Quintessential egg pleasure in just one bite, perfect white-to-yolk ratio.

And just think : mini egg, sunny-side up! mini poached egg! mini oeuf à la coque! even better : mini oeuf cocotte! Oh, the possibilities!

[Related post : the opposite adventure in egg scale, the goose egg!]

Those of you who have been around for a little while have probably noticed a personal penchant for all things pink, and this is only confirmed by my two most recent shoe acquisitions. I certainly don’t shy away from hefty doses of garlic either, so you can certainly imagine my glee at welcoming this beautiful bunch of pink garlic into my kitchen.

“Pink garlic?”, you ask, your right eyebrow arched in curiosity. Well yes, it is a unique variety of garlic, grown exclusively in and around the medieval town of Lautrec, in the South of France. It is protected by an IGP (Protected Geographical Indication, a European certification of origin), benefits from a Label Rouge quality certification and, most importantly, it has been awarded the honorific title of Prince des Condiments. “Princess” might have been more fitting, one might argue, given its rosy-cheeked cloves and pretty hair pompon.

Apart from its undeniable attractiveness, l’Ail Rose de Lautrec is also distinguished for its aromatic and subtle taste, sweeter and milder than its white cousin. It also keeps for much longer, six months to a year. It can be used anywhere you would normally use garlic — raw or cooked, sliced, chopped, crushed or unpeeled (“en chemise”, which means “shirt on”) — but also in a variety of recipes created especially for it : a pink garlic soup, a walnut and pink garlic tart, a lime and garlic sorbet, and even a pink garlic chocolate cake!

Pink garlic is planted in the fall every year, and harvested in late June, always after “La St-Jean” (St-John’s day, celebrated on June the 24th with popular bonfires and dances). It is then hung to dry for a month, before it is cleaned, sorted and selected according to the Label Rouge quality specifications, and put together in bunches, called manouilles (have fun trying to pronounce that).

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When I was a child, my family spent a week in Brittany every year during the spring break. The place where we went most often was Carnac, on the South coast of Brittany, a little town famous for its stunning prehistoric menhir alignments. It was always quite a gamble on the weather, as that time of year has equal chances of being brightly sunny, or grimly overcast and even thunderous. But I would be hard-pressed to choose the kind of weather I preferred : of course I loved riding my bike in the sun until I had sunburns on the backs of my hands, and building sandcastles that we fought to protect against the rising tide ; but I also have great memories of watching storms from the safety of the seaside, in awe of the strength with which the waves came crashing onto the pier. Getting dressed from head to toe in waterproof gear, walking on the beach against the fierce wind, flying kites, and coming home, the four of us red-cheeked, drippy-nosed, hardly seeing a thing through our soaked and salty glasses.

Of course, I also have many fond food memories of those vacations. In Carnac we knew every crêperie, every bakery and which one had the best kouign aman, a caramelized flaked pastry involving rather indecent amounts of butter, every ice-cream parlor and which one had the best waffle cones and flavors.

But my personal favorite, the treat I looked forward to the most, was Les Niniches : a hard candy in the shape of a long, thin cylinder, in a colored wrapping, with a little stick to hold it.

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Just when you thought that some things, like salt, couldn’t be improved upon, someone has to go out and invent mushroom salt!

This pretty grinder, which I bought at the Grande Epicerie de Paris, contains thick crystals of sea salt and chunks of dried mushrooms — chanterelles, porcini and African caesar mushrooms — so that the seasoning you grind out is a very pleasant blend of salted mushroom flavor. This is, as you would expect, particularly good on eggs and tomatoes, on potato-based dishes and buttered toast, but I tend to pretty much use it on any and everything, these days.

It is made by a company called The Cape Herb & Spice Company, based in South Africa, interestingly enough. They offer different kinds of spice-based products, including this line of grinders, called Elements of Spice, mixing sea salt and peppercorns with a variety of herbs, spices, seaweed or even flowers.

The blends have well-designed labels and imaginative names, which account for half the attraction, I’m sure : mine is called “Magic Mushrooms”, and for my next acquisition I have my eye on “Darling Buds”, a blend of sea salt, rose buds and petals, lavender and chamomile flowers. Or wait, let’s see, maybe “Fruits Alfresco”, with sundried tomatoes, roasted garlic, olive, bell peppers and red onion? Or maybe both?