Search for quail eggs - 4 results found

spaghetti, quail eggs: un po ‘come spaghetti alla carbonara

The eggs were beautiful, and they were much larger than quail eggs usually are (they were all double yolk, from young layers, considered good fortune in some cultures, including mine). I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but as soon as I spotted them I knew that I was ready to buy some beautiful large quail eggs.

I decided to make them part of a main course, but I quickly realized that soft boiling 10 eggs (I broke 2 on the way home) was going to be too labor intensive, if not time consuming, so I went for a luscious, savory pasta with fried quail eggs on top, not much unlike spaghetti alla carbonara, without the raw egg thing.

quail eggs on toast; spelt spaghettone, habanada, cheese

I had these little eggs, which I knew would make a good appetizer, especially if they were slipped onto some extraordinary toast. For the main course, I thought of having something pretty simple while still a little wintry. I headed for Luca Donofrio‘s fresh pasta shop inside Eataly in the afternoon, and there I found some thick fresh spelt pasta which I knew would be delicious with only some butter, a special seasoning, and some Parmesan cheese.

  • seven quail eggs (I served 4 of the 7, seen in the picture above, to Barry) from Violet Hill Farm, remaining from a similar meal the week before fried in a little butter and carefully transferred onto toasts of an Eric Kayser thinly-sliced torsade de aux olives (organic flour, liquid levin, olive oil, black and green olives, herbs of Provence), the eggs sprinkled with maldon salt, freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper, a pinch of dried dill, and scissored fresh chives scattered over all, the toasts served with upland cress from Two Guys from Woodbridge dressed lightly with a good olive oil

The second course was actually even simpler than the antipasto.

  • fresh spelt spaghettone (made with Wild Hive Farm local whole grain spelt, durum flour, eggs, water) from Luca Donofrio‘s fresh pasta shop inside Eataly served in a sauce of melted Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter, a little crushed golden home-dried habanada pepper (acquired fresh last season from Norwich meadows Farm), some freshly-ground black pepper, the pasta tossed with Parmigiano-Reggiano Vache Rosse from Eataly

 

quail eggs on toast; beet fusilli, brown butter, pinoli, cheese

Yeah, pretty snazzy, yet still down to earth, I’d say.

I couldn’t resist these little ones.  We love quail itself, but, while I’ve had many opportunities to bring home quail eggs, there was never the kind of imperative I felt looking at the beautiful clear plastic (yeah, well..) package of 15 while at the Union Square Greenmarket on Saturday:  They were local and they were organic-fed. That, and the opportunity of preparing something I hadn’t before was more than good enough for me this time.

But I had no idea what I was going to do with them.

My assumption was that they would a part of a first course, the second being a simple good pasta. Last night I put those two concepts together: The appetizer became a dish of fried quail eggs on toast and the main course a beet pasta with a browned-butter sage sauce which I embroidered only slightly.

  • eight quail eggs from Violet Hill Farm, fried in a heavy tin-lined copper skillet, seasoned with Maldon salt and freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper, sprinkled with organic Sicilian dried wild fennel flowers from Buon Italia, slid onto 8 slices, cut on the diagonal, of a really wonderful, sturdy ‘baguette sarasin’ (buckwheat flour bread) from Eric Kayser, which were toasted on top of the stove, then served with a little upland cress from Two Guys from Woodbridge, the little greens drizzled with a bit of very good Campania olive oil, from the Sannio region, and seasoned with salt and pepper
  • eight ounces of Sfoglini beet fusilli with a brown butter sage sauce composed of 2 tablespoons of ‘Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter‘ melted in a heavy, high-sided tin-lined copper sauté pan and heated until golden brown, after which a number of sage leaves from Keith’s Farm were tossed in and stirred with the butter, the pan was removed from the heat and juice from almost half of a local lemon (Fantastic Gardens of Long Island) added, the sauce set aside until the pasta had been cooked and drained (some of the pasta water retained), when it was added to the brown butter, heated gently and stirred, a good part of a cup of the reserved pasta liquid added, 2 or 3 tablespoons of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano Vache Rosse from Eataly tossed in and mixed with the pasta, which was then divided into 2 shallow bowls and scattered with a small handful of toasted pine nuts from Whole Foods Market
  • the wine was a California (Lodi) white, Karen Birmingham Sauvignon Blanc Lodi 2015
  • the music was Jordi Savall’s album, ‘Music for the Spanish Kings’ (of the 15th century), with his ensemble, Hespèrion XX

filetti alici marinate as primi

Because the pasta course was a leftover which had already made an appearance here, I’m only showing the primi portion of last night’s meal.

There was no actual ‘cooking’ involved, but there was enough busy work (also a neat image), so I decided to record it.

  • A package of alici marinate produced by Agostino Recca, from Eataly, the fillets removed from the package, laid on top of paper towels on a large plate in order to drain the sunflower oil in which they had been packaged, the top side gently dried with another paper towel, then carefully arranged on a second large plate, scattered with chopped parsley from Eataly, chopped oregano from Stokes Farm (which had somehow survived the winter inside our refrigerator door), and finely-chopped garlic from Healthway Farms & CSA, drizzled with Campania D.O.P. Penisola Sorrentina ‘Syrenum’ olive oil, the plate covered and set near a window where they remained at precisely 58º F (hey, I read somewhere that Italians love 58º F for their alici) for about an hour and a half, served as with some lightly-dressed upland cress from Two Guys from Woodbridge, and slices of a pain au levain from the Bread Alone stand in the Greenmarket
  • the wine was an Italian (Marche) white, Saladini Pilastri Falerio 2015, from Philippe Wines
  • the music was the German songs on the album, ‘I Hate Music – But I Love To Sing’, plus the Hanns Eisler songs on the album, ‘Salome Kammer; I’m a Stranger Here Myself’