Deconstructed Hollandaise Raw Egg Appetizer

I belong to a traditional nutrition club that meets once  a month. It is based on the work of Dr. Weston Price and Dr. Francis Pottenger, among others. Every month we have a speaker or a topic for discussion. Last year we had a meeting about about raw animal foods. Every traditional society ate some animal foods raw. One example is steak tartare. I wanted to bring something unique, as someone had already said she was bringing steak tartare. I thought about it and searched the internet for ideas.

Earlier that year I had tried eating raw egg yolks and loved them. It wasn't that far from soft boiled eggs, which my mother made for me as a child. When eating eggs over easy, I always try to cut away the white and pick up the whole yolk on my fork so that none of it breaks onto the plate. I searched for raw egg yolk appetizers that I could make for the meeting. There were a few but none really caught my imagination. One night my family was having asparagus and I made hollandaise sauce to go along with it. That became my inspiration for Deconstructed Hollandaise. I brought the lemon butter in a thermos to keep it the right temperature. I separated the eggs into plastic shot glasses and topped them with the lemon butter. It was a hit with most people. It's Hollandaise! What's not to like?

Warm 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup) in a saucepan. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and a dash of white pepper.

Put one tablespoon of lemon butter into the serving cup.

Separate the yolk from the egg

Add the yolk to the cup. 

Deconstructed Hollandaise Raw Egg appetizer

1 stick of salted butter

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

dash white pepper

eggs

Warm 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup) in a saucepan. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and a dash of white pepper. Put one tablespoon of lemon butter into the serving cup. Separate the yolk from the egg.  Add the yolk to the cup. Enjoy!

There is lemon butter left over, so you could make it smaller buy using 1/3 stick of butter and 1 tsp lemon juice. After you try it, you might decide a tablespoon per yolk is too stingy or maybe too lavish. Play around with it.

I'll bet you think I left something out. How do you eat it, you say?  Plop it into your mouth like taking a shot of tequila. I suppose you could use a spoon but why dirty another utensil?

Enormous Zucchini

I happened upon a fantastic thing today - Disappearing Zucchini Quiche. I had a baseball bat sized zucchini from my garden. I didn't know what I was going to do with it. To start, I peeled it, cut it in quarters lengthwise and seeded it. Then I sliced it vertically into spears and ran it through my food processor with the shredder blade. I mixed it with salt and sat it in a colander in the sink for a few hours while I went back to work. I considered fermenting it like sauerkraut.

Later I found a recipe for I Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Crab Crab Cakes, which are basically, Old Bay seasoned zucchini latkes. I never do a good job with these. They never firm up. They stick to the pan. I get the pan temp wrong. It's awful. They ended up mushy and reeking of the fat I cooked it in. Blech.

While I was researching what to do with this zucchini, my oldest daughter said that she LOVES quiche. My sister-in-law bakes quiche often and she had tried it over there. So I threw together a crustless quiche with the rest of the zucchini completely based on what I had. Here goes:

Disappearing Zucchini Quiche

Preheat oven to 350F.

whisk together

7-8 eggs

1/2 cup milk

toss with

~ 2.5 cups of shredded, salted and drained zucchini

~ 2 cups of shredded cheddar

~ 1 cup bacon bits

Grease rectangular baking pan. I used a 8 x 11.5 x 2in pyrex dish. Pour whole thing in there. Move it around a little to make sure the zucchini is well distributed. It was done in about 25-30 minutes. I turned off the oven and tossed a cup of shredded cheddar on the top. and let it melt. Notice I added no seasonings. There was already a lot of salt from the zucchini, cheese and bacon.

The amazing thing was that I COULD NOT tell that there was zucchini in this dish. It completely melded with the texture of the egg. My oldest daughter loved it. She is taking it for lunch tomorrow.

My son cracked us all up with his suffering. First, his Dad said we were having eggs for dinner. He used an outraged and whiny tone of voice.

My son exclaimed, "Eggs!?! For DINNER?!?".

Then I said, "No, it is quiche."

"Quiche? Why do we have to have quiche?! Oh, look there's CHEESE on top of it! Why does there have to be cheese?"

"There's cheese inside of it too."

"Awwwww!!"

I served it and said, "Wow, I can't tell there's zucchini in here at all."

"ZUCCHINI!"

Every time he protested, we couldn't help but laugh. Poor guy. Of course, he hated it after one bite.