Local Lemons

Quail Eggs with Smashed Potatoes and Arugula

I would have walked right past these speckled little eggs at the farmers' market, but Alejandro stopped to inquire and discovered that a pack of ten eggs cost only $1. One dollar? This was the beginning of the cheapest breakfast I have ever had.

I've been served quail eggs before at fancy restaurants, but never has one perched in my own kitchen. When I was short on ideas for what to do with them, I put some feelers out on facebook and twitter. Darya from Summer Tomato suggested sushi, and although it sounded oh so tempting, I didn't have all the ingredients on hand. The light bulb eventually went off (or on?) when my friend Jason mentioned eggs and potatoes. What could be simpler? And, along with showcasing the sweet flavor of the quail eggs, I could use the spicy Sicilian arugula that flourishes in my backyard.

This breakfast is exactly what I love about local, seasonal cooking. A few simple ingredients can produce an extraordinary meal that also happens to be extremely inexpensive. Besides the grilled bread that I made out of a whole wheat loaf from Wild Flour Bakery, this meal for two people cost me about $1.50 – total. Take that Mickey D's!

Tortilla Omelet

This is one of the easiest, tastiest breakfasts I have ever made – and the accolades all belong to the ingredients. Sweet Maui onions, local organic eggs, homemade tortillas and aged dry jack cheese are all spruced up with a generous sprinkle of cilantro and a squeeze of lime.

In my last post I mentioned the California Rancho Cooking cookbook, so I thought it only fair to now share one of its recipes. The dish is called Don Miguel Acosta's Tortilla Omelet, named after the 84-year-old Santa Barbara descendant who, as author Jacqueline Higuera McMahan says, still wakes up every day with ideas for new recipes. This one grabbed my attention because usually when tortillas and eggs are in the same meal, the tortillas' sole purpose is to wrap up the eggs in neat little breakfast burritos. Not here though - this recipe gives the tortilla top-billing, so use ones that you made yourself or pick some up at a local Mexican restaurant. I used leftover ancho-corn tortillas from my halibut, but plain corn turns out just as good. I changed the recipe quite a bit from the original, but the technique and the feel are the same, and that's the important part.

I love how rustic these eggs feel. When you're eating it, you can imagine early Californians preparing their breakfast the same way, using only the natural ingredients they have on hand. This is the way food was meant to be eaten – pure and simple.

Farmers' Market Scrambled Eggs

I was scarred as a child by IHOP breakfasts. The memory of a rubbery glob of yellow eggs sticking to my fork before I closed my eyes and braced for the sodium overload. This dreadful memory was enough to steer me clear of scrambled eggs for about 20 years, until I discovered the ingenious egg dishes at Tini restaurant in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The owner, Monica, uses local eggs and lightly beats her eggs with treats like smoked salmon, fresh goat cheese, roasted tomatoes and fragrant herbs. Her food was rich, and maybe too buttery, but Tini was the only place I wanted to go after running the 13 miles of the Brooklyn half marathon.

In Berkeley, I have yet to eat a plate of scrambled eggs out, but after bringing home a bag full of spring vegetables from the market, I thought of Tini and Monica's eggs. A few tricks I learned about scrambled eggs–like don't beat them for too long and let them set for at least a minute in the pan before stirring– have transformed my childhood image of scrambled eggs to something I can actually look forward to eating. I also make my eggs with olive oil instead of butter, and if you use good olive oil, the flavor gives your eggs something that butter never can. Eggs can be, and should be, made with olive oil no matter which style you cook them. The delicate flavor of fresh eggs is as good a use for your expensive olive oil as homemade mozzarella.

I know some people add water or milk to their scrambled eggs before cooking them, but I don't think that's necessary. In fact, if you use good quality eggs, all that really does is water them down. If you use fresh tomatoes instead of roasted, seed them first to get rid of the excess moisture. You can pretty much use any fresh vegetable you want in this dish, as long as it doesn't add too much liquid to the pan.