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Chef Chip Desormeaux - 678.480.4973

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AMUSE BOUCHE                 by Chef Chip Desormeaux

/ah-mooz boosh/ def: A small complimentary appetizer offered at fine restaurants. From French, literally, "it entertains the mouth."

Food & Entertaining Tips from The Portable Chef

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Happy 4th of July! And, since I haven't written to you since Father's Day, I hope you spent it well, too. My dad, my brother, three of my boys and I spent the weekend together. We finally pulled that 16' canoe out of mothballs and got her belly wet in the North Georgia mountains.

We were out all day and well into the night. Had a great time!

This week let's shine the spot light on the common, everyday egg. As simple and unassuming as an egg is, it is absolutely the most versatile food we have! The egg has gotten a bad rap over the last couple decades. I think mostly due to the medical field groping about for answers to Americans' declining health. What a shame.

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The Incredible Edible Egg

The most misunderstood ingredient in our diet is the common chicken egg.

It's one of our more nutritious staples yet is feared as potentially one of the deadliest.

It's as commonplace as table salt yet is the most important chemical and physical ingredient in many of our favorite sauces and pastries.

You begin with a runny, unappealing liquid, throw it into a pan and within about three minutes it transforms into a solid that you can cut with a knife.

You can take the same egg and, instead, separate out the white and whip it until it forms a dense foam that can then be baked into a meringue for a pie. Similarly, the yolk can be used to enrich chocolate into truffle, or it can be slowly heated and whipped into a sauce to thicken it.

We use eggs to hold our meatloaves and crabcakes together, add leavening to chocolate tortes and glaze a loaf of bread.

No other kitchen ingredient is so versatile and useful. And, yet, it's also one of the most feared, for its cholesterol and salmonella.

Which is very too sad because that same yolk, "laden with cholesterol," also contains most of the egg's total vitamins and about half of the total protein. (Makes removing the yolk kind of pointless, doesn't it?)

And, while it is abolutely true that deadly salmonella can be contracted from poorly handled eggs, a recent USDA analysis ( Risk Analysis April 2002 22(2):203-18 ) showed that only 1 in 30,000 eggs has any trace of salmonella at all. And that less than a third of those contaminated eggs will actually result in someone becoming ill.

OK, glad that's out of the way! Let's go over some useful tips for handling and use of eggs.

If you need to test the freshness of an egg, you can do so by dropping it into a bowl of cold water. The quicker it sinks, the fresher it is. If it actually floats, get rid of it. This is due to the air pocket at the blunt end of the egg. This air pocket starts out very small and, as the egg ages, becomes larger.

Freshness of the egg affects the finished product of your dish. When cracked into a pan for frying, an older egg will "lay flatter" in the pan, the white will appear less cloudy and the yolk breaks more easily. An old egg will make a weaker foam when whipped and it also loses some of it's binding abilities.

When quality of ingredients is especially critical, such as for mayonnaises, sauces, custards, and pastry, buy your eggs on the day you plan to use them.

A few quick tips for proper egg storage and such:

• Egg quality deteriorates as much in a day at room temperature as in four days in the refrigerator.
• Agitation thins the white, so storage on a shelf, out of the way is better than in the door.
• Moisture loss causes egg quality to deteriorate, so eggs should be stored in an air tight container.
• Properly kept, eggs should last for several weeks in the shell. Once broken, use them immediately.
• Egg whites flat out will not whip if they come into contact with even the slightest trace of fat, grease or egg yolk.

Chicken eggs supply a large amount of protein, and provide significant amounts of vitamin A, riboflavin, folic acid, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, choline, iron, calcium, phosphorus and potassium.

Eat your eggs. And have a productive day!

Bon Appetit!

Chef Chip Desormeaux

But, Wait! There's More!
(Recipes, Nifty Gadgets, & Stuff Like That)

Recipes. Last weekend a client of mine asked me to prepare an Italian-themed menu for his and his wife's anniversary party. They had gone to Italy for their honeymoon.

Along with the usual antipasti, we served Calamari Fritti with a Tomato Vodka Sauce. We did the calamari right there in front of the guests in small batches so it could be consumed while it was still all warm and vulnerable!

We also served crostini with two toppings: Mustard Crusted Salmon topped with a Raspberry-Beet Vinaigrette & Fried Leeks, and Shredded Grouper with Roasted Garlic Aioli & Capers. I had some leftover grouper in my fridge the next day and had to figure out what to do with it. I also had some leftover olive tapenade and just over a metric ton of grits in my pantry. See photo at right for what all that turned into. All recipes here.

Where to Buy It. The tomatoes you see above come from Yoder's Family Farm in Canton, Ga.

Bill Yoder sells his organic heirloom tomatoes (about 200 varieties of them) at the Green Market at Spruill Gallery in Sandy Springs every Wednesday morning. Bill's tomatoes will knock your socks off!

Visit the market sometime. These farmers' produce are literally vine ripened, ensuring they pack the maximum nutritional value Nature intended. And far and away better than anything you'll find at your neighborhood grocery store.

The Green Market at Spruill also features cooking demos by local chefs. Bill said Michael Tuohy of Woodfire Grill was there last week. I may be doing something there as well.

For those of you not in Atlanta, find local farmers you can support in your own area.

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