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Cast Iron Eggs
Some years ago I visited London for the first time and was staying in a rather depressing dumpy but affordable hotel, but not for long. Old family friends, the Streeters, who had retired to Harrogate—land of James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small), invited me to visit. It was like coming home—a beautiful apartment in the countryside, my own room with comfy bed and down pillow. I never did have to return to that dumpy hotel as my next stop was friends in Paris.
Staying with the Streeters was a most wonderful and sentimental visit as I had grown up with their sons and we hadn’t seen each other for years. Ted took me to see the newly unearthed (literally) Viking Village in York. Rosalind, a terrific cook, fed me well, but what was most memorable was breakfast. Rosalind served me a fried egg that was still sitting in the little copper bottomed stainless steel Revereware skillet in which it had been fried. She silently set it before me, having announced the night before that she didn’t like conversations first thing in the morning, and left me blissfully to enjoy the fabulous country egg.
When later I told her what a perfect way it was to serve an egg, keeping it warm but not continuing to cook it she told me that she had been looking for years for more of those little frying pans so she could serve more than one person at a time.
Neither of us ever found more of those pans but just this month I found the perfect substitute--in fact it’s even better and more charming. Lodge has just produced a collection of cast iron “table ware” which means that the little pans are intended for serving at table. I lost no time frying my egg in the round one and eureka—perfection!
I like my fried eggs crispy around the edges and on the bottom and the yolk still runny but no unset yucky white stuff on top.
I heated the cast iron pan on low until about 375ºF on my infrared thermometer, added a little bacon fat (clarified butter or oil will work too), and then the egg, salt, and pepper. The thin watery part of the white flowed out to the edges of the pan, promising a crisp doily collar while the freshness of the egg caused the rest of the white to puddle perfectly around the bright yellow yolk. Ahhhh! I fried it until the white had puffed up a little around the yolk and there was just the barest trace of unset white at the edges of the yolk which I knew would disappear with the slight continued cooking from the cast iron.
I added 3 tiny intense just-picked yesterday cherry tomatoes from Maria Menegus’s garden which is burgeoning with infinite variety of ripe tomatoes this time of year and à table! The acid bright/candy sweet tiny tomatoes burst in my mouth—hot from the residual heat of the pan but essentially uncooked.
Elliott watched amused. He doesn’t eat eggs even though it has been proclaimed that an egg a day is very healthful. I guess he lost the habit during the years when other theories prevailed. But if he did, I would have served him his in the oval shaped little Lodge pan.
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Comments
i'm very much on the fence about writing my memoirs--maybe when i'm much older if i can still remember....woody's been taking notes each time i tell him a story. and i do have much to tell having worked in this amazing food business and so many phases of it for over 40 years!
Reply to this Posted by: rose levy beranbaum | September 17, 2008 5:21 PM #
Rose, I'm so pleased you admire and have met MFK - I'm a huge fan and have (I think) read everything she had written that is in print. It must have been quite a thrill to have met her. I do hope she has inspired you sufficiently for you to write your own food/baking memoirs and stories - maybe the next book????
Reply to this Posted by: Annie | September 17, 2008 5:08 PM #
mfk was my greatest inspiration as a writer! i actually met her once in s.f.
Reply to this Posted by: rose levy beranbaum | September 16, 2008 3:16 PM #
You just gave me an excuse to break out my cast iron pan.
Reply to this Posted by: Corey | September 16, 2008 2:11 PM #
I really enjoyed reading this and it reminded me of the MFK Fisher chapter from "An Alphabet for Gourmets" letter H for Happiness. Mmmmm nothing like a good fried egg!
Reply to this Posted by: Annie | September 16, 2008 11:33 AM #
i.e. i eat the egg out of the pan.
Reply to this Posted by: rose levy beranbaum | September 15, 2008 2:45 PM #
yes to both!
Reply to this Posted by: rose levy beranbaum | September 15, 2008 2:44 PM #
Do you eat the egg from the little pan or do you tip it out onto a plate?
Re the no-knead bread, I have a porcelain lined cast iron Dutch oven. Would this work for the no-knead bread?
Reply to this Posted by: Charlotte | September 15, 2008 2:42 PM #
let me rephrase what i wrote: cast iron works for no knead bread because it gets preheated. it doesn't work for other types of bread because you can't preheat the cast iron and then fit the shaped dough into it and cast iron takes a longer time to heat up. bread requires immediate heat when placed in the oven. with no knead bread it gets this in cast iron because the cast iron gets preheated. i hope this is clearer now.
Reply to this Posted by: rose levy beranbaum | September 15, 2008 2:32 PM #
Actually, I'm talking about cast iron bread pans for other kinds of bread, not No-Knead bread.d
Reply to this Posted by: Lola LB | September 15, 2008 2:11 PM #
actually i'm not sure how good cast iron bread pans would be. the no knead bread is baked in a preheated pan but that wouldn't work for loaves and they seem to bake best and rise highest with quick heat, especially bottom heat. cast iron is slow to heat.
Reply to this Posted by: rose levy beranbaum | September 15, 2008 1:55 PM #
No bread pans, though. :-( Could you sweet-talk them into producing these again?
Reply to this Posted by: Lola LB | September 15, 2008 1:39 PM #
I see that they now have dutch ovens with stainless steel knob and handles - just perfect for the No-Knead Bread!
Reply to this Posted by: Lola LB | September 15, 2008 1:37 PM #
There's something about little pans that always makes me feel happy. It's about finding the perfect tool for a task, I think. And the cute factor, too, they hold some of the same appeal as tiny shoes.
Reply to this Posted by: Julie | September 15, 2008 8:28 AM #
This post puts a smile on my face. One of my favorite kitchen items is a 5-inch cast iron skillet that was given to me by my husband's grandmother. She used it for years to make "one egg".
Reply to this Posted by: Patrincia | September 13, 2008 10:29 AM #