It’s Probably Axel’s Fault. All of It.

One of the gifts of technology has been being able to “hear” magazines in podcast form, and in this household, there is altogether too much access to food podcasts. D sometimes listens to them, and gets …these ideas… ideas T really, really, really wishes he had never heard.

His latest idea, though, is Axel’s fault. And, it all started with the cured egg yolks.

What could be finer, terms of lovely things to enjoy, than a fresh new cookbook? With full color images, and cross-sections of the ingredients… the dishes… the appliances… Oh, yes. This is Modernist Cuisine at Home, a very, very pricey little cookbook that is more an art piece than a cookbook (but, to its credit, it comes with an Actual Cookbook which does not contain high def images, and which does have stain-proof, wipeable pages). In this very beautiful book, which is Axel’s newest pride and joy, D saw a photo of someone grating something which was not cheese, and D remembered an America’s Test Kitchen episode he’d seen. “Oh, yeah, those are preserved egg yolks!” he said.

In terms of things T wants to eat, egg yolks are not that high on the list. A childhood of parents who were at times vegan and other times vegetarians who kept chickens left her with a mild distrust of egg yolks. She eats eggs, but prefers them scrambled, so she cannot see… anything about them. Once you’ve candled eggs… yes. Well. The less said, the better.

Now, T didn’t think much of this throwaway comment, but D is in possession of a mind which fastens upon a thing and does. not. let. go. He remembered those eggs. For days. And when we were gifted with a basket of some farm fresh from his niece’s chickens, he had An Idea of what to do with them, he said.

An “idea” he said. “Something cool,” he said.

It seems the word ‘cool’ has varying definitions within a single household, but we digress.

It’s apparently very simple. Separate egg and yolk. Dump yolk in mixture of salt and sugar. End up with far too many whites, and no real plan of anything to do with them. Dismay your spouse with your apparent glee at the disturbingly orange, firm little balls of protein-rich… something-ness, which languish for weeks on end in their dry brine cure, growing ever harder and more disturbingly un-egg-like.

Some argue that the yolks need to air dry, others suggest a short stint in a low oven. Regardless, they seem raw-ish, and T has determined that no matter how… “like Parmesan” dried, aged egg yolks are, she will not be eating them, thank you so. She will, instead, avail herself of the myriad frozen egg yolks, and inveigle her way into getting macarons. Frequently.

Macrons are, in and of themselves, another deceptively simple food that is tricky. It’s just whipped egg whites, a bit of sugar, and almond flour for structure – how hard could it be?

Hard.

Sure, you can whip the whites, but if you don’t sift both flour and powdered sugar, and the sun comes out from behind a cloud, it will all go wrong. You may sift the flour and sugar, but if the chickens laid the eggs on or near a new moon, it will all go wrong. Your eggs may be room temperature, you may whip to stiff peaks, but if the wind is from the East, well. Honestly, the EAST??? What were you thinking?

You may leave your cookies to sit the requisite thirty+ minutes to set, you may keep your kitchen hermetically sealed against drafts, you may sing all sixteen lines of Va, Pensiero in perfect Italian, swaying gently, but … the cookies will not raise. You will make another batch. You will make stiffer peaks. You will add less coloring. You will give up on remotely following the sanitized recipe and add tiny flecks of ground vanilla bean. They will still not raise, and a few of them will cave in.

You will not know why. You will serve them anyway, they will melt in spouse’s mouth, and be the most delicious puffs of air-infused-with-Creamsicle she has ever eaten. She will share them with her chorus buddies, and they will clamor, in a strictly ladylike fashion, for mOaR.

(Oh, yes. Fiori di Sicilia, you ask? Well, that most divine of all seasonings makes your cookies taste like Creamsicles. A mere 1/2 teaspoon, and all is delicious and smelling of soft, vanilla-y citrussy goodness. It tastes like your Italian summer dreams, even if that one time you were in Italy in the summer it rained the whole time and you never even heard any Verdi when you were there, only incoherent screams, and a lot of horns from people flipping you off as they drove up waaay too close to your back bumper…)

*cough* Where were we? Ah, yes. Axel. His fault. His cookbook. Those disturbing orange orbs. The amazing fluffs of Creamsicle goodness. Yes, well. Perhaps Axel can be forgiven this time for once again instigating some hair-brained (like harebrained, but…worse) foodie scheme into this household. After all, the more of those slightly disturbing orange orbs there are, the more freely available egg whites there are, perfect for more experimentation in making the perfect macarons. Some day, they will rise triumphant and smooth, perfected and serene. Some day, there will be no cracks. Some day, all that invisibly melting cookie flavor will actually look as perfect as the ones in bakeries. Until then, we’ll keep on trying. After all, there really isn’t much most of us wouldn’t do for Italian summer dreams. (Dreams work better, after all… they don’t contain those rude drivers, for one thing.)

Health Junk, Because Some of You Wanted to Know: Week… seven? Yes. Week seven of D’s medical leave, and a low, gray fogbank has taken up residence around us. Thank God for a bit of precipitation and moisture in the world, which will soon herald a green springtide, but the low visibility and endless gray means a lot of indoor days… and trips to the Oakland Museum of California. Thank goodness for indoor entertainment. If you haven’t been, go. It’s truly one of the better museums in the Bay Area.

It’s trade-off time! According to the Geneva Marriage Accord of 1386, spouses have to trade off being ill. By a narrow margin, this time it’s T who is dragging, as her autoimmune disease has figured out a way to bowl over her immunosuppressant drug. Now is the season of enormous fatigue, new labs and new trials and – ugh… just in time for the upcoming choral show, where T is going to put on elbow-length gloves, a string of pearls, and …sequined ears (don’t ask) to make a fool of herself. The performance definitely won’t be as high energy as it might have been, but, at least the drug conk out was expected; her endocrinologist warned her early on that there would be multiple drug shifts throughout the life of the disease, because that just seems to be the way autoimmune disease goes. It’s no fun, though.

Himself, meanwhile, under medical supervision, is doing his own drug juggling, to gradually reintroduce some necessary medications. There are gains every day, and though we still don’t know entirely what caused this catastrophic unhinging of every single thing, having a break from work stress while sifting through the detritus of the implosion of his life has been, while not wholly pleasant, bracing and necessary. Some days it’s a slog, but he’s doing as well as he can, and wellness – and happiness – seems a less elusive goal these days.

And how are you? What are you looking forward to these days? More importantly, what weird foodie thing are you cooking? Here’s hoping it has nothing to do with Axel…