Quiche made in a poach pod. Poach pod: it’s not just for poaching anymore!

If there’s a food you don’t like, try eating it pickled. - Neven Mrgan

True as this adage is, I confess it may not apply to pickled eggs so much, as most people like eggs. But this will get us started on pickling in general, which we hope to revisit soon.

A few weeks ago, some chicken-owning friends offered us three dozen eggs. Not one to say no to local eggs - one of those ingredients where the small-batch stuff is really noticeably better than the store kind - I then had to decide what to do with thirty-six eggs. Enter pickling, one of the best ways to preserve food.

We’ll need perfectly hardboiled eggs, so let’s start with well washed and cleaned eggs - I put 24 of them in a large pot. Cover the eggs by 1 inch of water; bring to a boil on high, then immediately remove from heat, cover, and let gently cook for 17 minutes.

While you wait, fill a large bowl with ice. After the 17 minutes are up, carefully transfer the eggs (using a slotted spoon) to the ice bath and let them chill for 2 minutes. The egg will shrink and let go of the shell. By the way, don’t really want to hardboil freshly laid eggs. Slightly older ones (a few weeks or so) will part with the shell more smoothly; the flavor shouldn’t be much different.

This next step is usually skipped when hardboiling, unfortunately: bring the water in the pot to a boil again, and move eggs to it in batches. Boil them for 10 seconds - this will expand the shell even further. In the ice bath they go again after this second boil. This heat-cool-heat-cool cycle will make things easier when you get to the longest part of this process: peeling the eggs. It’s a good idea also to let the eggs cool down in the final ice bath for 15 minutes or so. You’ll be making the pickling brine during this time.

You can do endless variations on brine; the basic idea is: 50% water, 50% acid, plus spices. In my case, I mixed 10 oz balsamic vinegar, 10 oz apple cider vinegar, and 20 oz water. For spices and seasonings, I threw in a few cloves of garlic, black peppercorns, half a tablespoon of salt, and 4 tablespoons of brown sugar. Brought to a near-boil over medium-high heat, this wicked brew filled the kitchen with the smell of winter appetizers. While the brine cools down (it should not steam at all), peel the eggs. It helps if you can get help from friends, loved ones, neighborhood children, retired businessmen, elderly novelists, etc. etc.

What sort of container should you use? Anything with a tight seal and a wide mouth will work. I picked up a wide, half-gallon glass jar with a screw-on lid. Glass will let you see the beautiful color and texture of white orbs floating in liquid midnight, and it’s also less likely to stain and absorb the smell of vinegar. Whatever container you go with, wash it with lots of soap and hot water.

When everything’s cool and clean, spoon the eggs into the jar, pour the brine over them - making sure it covers them all - and store your proud batch of pickled eggs in the fridge. Now, some folks will tell you pickled eggs will keep just fine even if not refrigerated; I say, why risk it. Whether they’re cooked and pickled or not, I wouldn’t leave eggs at room temperature longer than a few days.

Stored in the fridge, these will keep up to 18 months (as if you won’t eat them sooner than that.) How soon is too soon, though? I tasted this batch at one day, three days, one week, two weeks, and four weeks. After one day, all I got was very forward vinegar on the outside, and little complexity on the inside. Waiting a week allowed the acid to find its way to the yolk; it was a quite different dish. After four weeks, the flavors deepened and the eggs toughened a bit (which isn’t necessarily bad, though they may get rubbery after several months.) My recommendation is to wait at least one week before serving.

And how do you serve these beautiful black marbles, exactly? Rinsed and dried and bare isn’t too bad! There’s plenty of flavor here. The typical way of fancying them up is to devil the yolks. May I suggest mixing them with a basil-and-chili aioli? Or perhaps horseradish and beet? Top a leafy-green salad with them? As with the brine itself, do what feels right, do it often, and don’t be afraid to experiment.

For dinner, I made Dog Mountain Farm duck yolk ravioli with seasoned homemade ricotta. It was great but this post isn’t about duck eggs or fresh pasta this is about the ricotta, which is one of those amazingly simple yet sublime things to cook.

The recipe I use when I make ricotta is from Gourmet magazine (rest in peace) but don’t let that deter you, it really is easy. I halved the amounts given since I live by myself and the cheese is only good for a few days in the fridge — all told, I ended up with a cup or so of fresh ricotta. I used:

• 1 quart whole milk
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1-2 tablespoons of lemon juice (about half a lemon, make sure to pick out the seeds)

The first thing you want to do is line a colander with some cheesecloth then put the colander over a bowl — this is good preparation and important because things happen quickly once you start. Now, bring the whole milk, cream and salt to a full boil on about medium high and make sure to stir regularly with a spatula to keep the milk from scorching. Once it’s boiling, add the lemon juice and give the mixture a quick stir to incorporate the juice then turn the heat down to medium to maintain a simmer. Stir gently for another two minutes, you’ll see the mixture start to separate into solid milk curds and liquid whey. After it looks like everything has separated, pour the mixture into your cheesecloth lined colander. You can let it drain like this for an hour or so, I like to tie the cheesecloth up and hang it over my sink to let gravity help extract any lingering whey.

And you just made cheese. Nice! But why? Why bother, even with something so simple, when tubs of ricotta are in the same aisle you get the whole milk and cream from? Because store bought ricotta is grainy, flavorless and usually full of preservatives whereas homemade it’s fresh and subtle, amazing on a salty cracker with a little honey. Or as a nest for a duck yolk ravioli.

Speaking of which, my ravioli were excellent on some fresh salad greens with a few roasted beets leftover from Sunday dinner. I first encountered yolk ravioli over at Michael Ruhlman’s blog — for mine, I mixed about a third of a cup of ricotta with some minced leek, meyer lemon rind, black pepper and a little olive oil. I boiled the sealed ravioli in a big pot of sea-salty water for not-quite-three minutes. The whole thing contrasted pretty nicely against a German Schlenkerla Maerzen Smokebeer.

I usually skip my own neighborhood’s Sunday market for neighboring Ballard’s more decidedly foodish farmer’s market but I’d heard rumors that Fremont’s is more farmer friendly these days so I thought I’d roll down the hill and check it out. I’m quite glad I did.

The pickings are still much slimmer than Ballard, with a few produce stands and one for meat, run by Dog Mountain Farms, who were selling chickens, guinea hens and eggs. Like every vendor I’ve ever met at a farmer’s market, the folks from Dog Mountain were friendly, knowledgeable and happy to answer my questions about how their fowl were raised and what to do with a guinea hen. I left with two guineas (they were on special), a chicken, half a dozen chicken eggs and half a dozen duck eggs. I hit the produce stand for veggies and dinner was pretty much done.

Guinea hens are pretty scarce here in the U.S. but they’ve been familiar to European kitchens for centuries. Despite a half dozen recipe ideas from the folks at Dog Mountain, I decided to just roast mine whole. A liberal dusting of kosher salt and pepper, half a lemon and a few sprigs of fresh thyme in the cavity were all the seasonings I bothered with. I roasted it at 375 for 55 minutes, when the skin was taunt and brown and a knife prick to the thigh showed clear running juices. Earlier, I’d roasted then chilled a golden and a dark red beet for a salad dressed with a champagne vinaigrette.

I’ve been playing with a sous vide water oven (more on that later) and decided to poach one of the duck eggs in its shell at 145° for an hour. This rested on a nest of rice fried with canola oil and some thinly sliced leeks and was truly the star of the show. The egg came out of its shell in a single piece, as if it’d been molded. The whites were solid, the yolk in some sort of plasmic state between a solid an liquid. It was quite rich, certainly meatier than a standard chicken egg, and complemented the dark guinea meat quite nicely. A regular poached, or even fried, egg would stand in just fine here.

As for the guinea, I was a little underwhelmed, though I blame my standard roasting. Unlike a chicken, it was much more difficult to discern the differences between the breast and thigh, as it all tasted very similar to the dark meat we’re accustomed to in a chicken. The skin, though, was the most surprising — tougher and without much flavor. The crisp skin of a well roasted chicken is a thing of beauty, I enjoyed the meat of my guinea hen much more after discarding the skin.

A Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery Pale Ale seemed an apropos complement.

I’ve been on an egg kick lately, so Jim’s post about eggs in a basket came at the perfect time to introduce a recurring Salt & Fat feature: our experiences cooking each other’s recipes. Call it peer review, double-checking, self-commenting. You’ve read Jim’s post, right? Good!

First note: I don’t actually own a cast-iron pan. Yes, they’re just grand at cooking, heavy and rugged and manly. But I’m too lazy to clean them the long way. So I compromise and wield a blue steel pan, which is also heavy and nonstick, but completely smooth and so easier to wipe. It doesn’t replace cast iron completely; hey, I’m not a fan of upside-down pineapple cake anyway.

In the pan went the butter and hazelnut bread, then eggs followed by fumee de sel (smoked salt). I like my eggs very runny and my toast pretty dark, so next time I’ll let the toast do its thing for a minute, flip it, and then break the eggs.

I should mention that Christa, my better half, dislikes yolks, so I made her an egg-white-only version. You’ll definitely want to flip the whole thing there since egg whites cook so unevenly (the bottom burns quickly, the top stays liquid forever.)

Normally I’m not a fan of seedy, grainy bread, but this was a perfect pairing. A drizzle of truffle oil over the whole thing, a side of breakfast sausage and hot-sauced kewpie mayo, and brother, what a breakfast. Thanks, Jim.

Fried eggs, toast. Not exactly blog worthy, right? Whatever, it’s Saturday morning, I slept in, I’m hungry now and it sure beats a bowl of artificially sweetened, milk coloring, factory processed simple carbohydrates. For this one, you’ll need two pieces of good bread (whole grain or something with nuts in it works really well), two eggs and a little butter.

Heat a skillet (I like my 10” cast iron for this job) or pan on medium for a few minutes. Add about a tablespoon of butter — enough to coat the pan but not really pool up. While it’s melting, use the top of a juice glass or a biscuit cutter to cut holes in the middle of the two pieces of bread (make sure to keep the cutouts). These are your baskets. Add the bread to the pan, cutouts too, then crack an egg in the middle of piece of bread. The egg should start to sizzle immediately, after a minute or so, add a one-finger pinch of kosher salt and a few fine grinds of black pepper. Use the cutouts as a guide for how done the bread is — everything should be finished in about 4-5 minutes. If you’re squeemish about soft yolks, flip the eggtoasts and let them fry for another minute or so. If you’ve got some fresh parsley, cut it up as fine as you can and add for a little color; I also like a few splashes of tabasco.