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eieieomeote: goldenrod eggs

goldenrod eggs

goldenrod eggs: buttered toast, with an eggy cream sauce, topped with a grated hard boiled egg. a staple of home economics classes everywhere--at some point, anyway. its appeal for the junket set junta is that not only does it teach an addled adolescent how to boil an egg, but also how to create a cream sauce, temper an egg yolk, and use a grater efficiently.

i think i originally learned how to do this in summer camp, as home economics had been discarded from the curriculum in favour of japanese photography or spanish sex ed (doubling up on subjects meant saving time, money, and for a whole heckuvalotta hilarity); later, i found a more palatable recipe in marion cunningham's "breakfast book". if you are interested in a more authentic home ec experience, there is a recipe in a free e-book, originally published as a textbook in 1920, "Corner of Washington's Kitchen at Mount Vernon School and Home Cooking" by Carlotta C. Greer Head of the Department of Foods and Household Management, East Technical High School, Cleveland, Ohio. *whew*.

here's the home ec lesson, with my revised recipe, by way of bill granger and marion cunningham:

hard boiled eggs: place two eggs in a small saucepan, cover with cold water then bring to a boil on high heat. reduce to a simmer, then cook for another 5 to 7 minutes (up to ten if you have more eggs). set aside eggs.

cream sauce: heat 1 tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan until melted. add 1 tablespoonful of flour to the butter, stir and cook over medium heat for a minute or so. add 3/4 cup of whole milk and stir or whisk until the sauce has thickened. separate an egg yolk from a room temperature egg, and place in a small bowl. add a tablespoonful of the hot milk sauce into the yolk and mix briskly. now carefully add this to the rest of the sauce in the pan and incorporate it. cook further for 1 to 2 minutes, then take it off heat. season with salt, pepper, a shot of hot pepper sauce, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

toast bread. butter generously. place on plate. spoon warm sauce over the toast. use a fine grater to grate a hardboiled egg (or two) over the toast and sauce. garnish with chives, olives, or whatever takes your fancy.

13 comments:

Lots to like there Santos. I'm woring between, the dish itself, "junket set junta" and the ethnic curriculum possibilities.

Looks yum - how come we only got to make crud like cornflour mould in Home Ec?? I, too, am fascinated by the multi-lingual, multi-ethnic curriculum... Could be useful back in SA whith our 11 national languages. Zulu Geography, Sotho Biology, Xhosa Maths. How fantastic!!

Hi Santos,

Interesting. =) I especially like that grated hard boiled egg. Mmmm.

I thought you were going to shock me with you know....after you said you were moving the topic to your blog. LOL!

anthony--definitely one of those "retro" recipes. i may just dip into all my old cookbooks for this thingo from now on.

jeanne--what the funk is cornflour mould when it's at home? actually, all the multilingual multitasking classes were electives, so think more like zulu badminton, sotho debate club, xhosa cross country skiing.

reid--oh man. okay, first rule of thumb with balut eating--never eat one that's been breaded, battered, or deep-fried because it's most likely an old egg and the chick will definitely have something frightastic like a beak or eyes. when you get a good one, it's better to just bore a coin sized hole in the top, sprinkle some salt in there and suck it down in one go. you really don't want to look at it, and anyway, you don't want to mess it up with something like toast :-D

meanwhile, back at the ranch, that grated hard boiled egg is an interesting garnish. i've done it a couple of times for other dishes and it sort of freaks people out if you can get the bits a little long and stringy. guaranteed someone won't be able to figure out what it is.

Is the sauce a bit like holandaise? It looks yummy!

btw, are you serious about spanish sex ed?

hi holly! you know what? you're right--it tastes like one, but it's infinitely simpler to make.

seriously! :-)

Hey Santos -- I LOVE this...so many fave elements: crunchy toast, creamy lemony sauce, eggs...

and I DID teach Spanish Sex Ed, although not Japanese Photography...but that's another story for another day...

hey julie--save an egg from the next time you make egg salad for this, it's pretty funky. it even tastes like a home ec project.

get out! you taught spanish sex ed? awesome. isn't it a hoot? i noticed if i couldn't remember a word, usually i'd just have to change the accent (gestation=gestación) or add an 'o' (ovary=ovario). more fun than reading about pedro and perdita, anyway.

We never made this in my Home Ec class! Well, maybe we did and I've blocked it...I hated the teacher in the worst way.

Anyway, this sounds very tasty and looks great!

Moira

hi moira!

the closest i ever got to taking home ec outside of summer camp cooking classes was high school chemistry with mme. verheiden who was truly a nutty professor but an absolute ace at whipping up a meal on a bunsen burner. she was a difficult teacher and as batty as nora, but i think i must have loved her as a chem teacher because of her culinary finesse in the labs.

What a neat recipe!

I've been buying a lot of old or retro-themed cookbooks lately (Collector's Press has a fantastic selection, if anyone's interested...www.collectorspress.com), and you're right; they hold a treasure trove of funky and fun dishes!

Our home-ec teacher would NEVER have let us grate a hard-boiled egg. She would have considered that far too advanced for the likes of us.

This looks delicious! If you put spinach and ham underneath the sauce, the dish could be turned into goldenrod florentine.

-Elizabeth

Just made this tonight. Used sour dough bread, and bacon for the topping. I found that I needed to double the yolks in the sauce for a more "eggy" flavor. A hit with the fam.