noodsletter #.0054

Deviled eggs, chili, chicken fat rolls, chicken farce

Jan 20, 2025

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Book Bit

The Automat with its woeful, watery macaroni, its bready meat loaf, the cubicles of drying sandwiches; mud, glue, and leather, from these textures you made your choice. The miseries of the deformed diners and their revolting habits; they were necessary, like a sewer, like the Bowery, Klein’s, 14th Street. Every great city is a Lourdes where you hope to throw off your crutches but meanwhile must stumble along on them, hobbling under the protection of the shrine.

From Sleepless Nights, by Elizabeth Hardwick.

(Image: https://www.edwardhopper.net)

Happy New Year! (Treat yourself to an egg.)

Well, here we are.

My family doesn’t make a big to-do about New Year celebrations. The only tradition we have is making a pile of pigs-in-blankets—it’s one of the few meals I have nothing to do with, beyond popping the can of pastry my wife uses to swaddle mini Sabrett’s.

However, this year, my wife requested deviled eggs. So I made some.

Before we get to the deviled eggs, I have to recount this annoying thing that happened to me. I was getting a flu shot at Walgreen’s, and when I went into the wee prison-cum-storage area they use to jab you with microchips, the woman administering the shot said, “Wait, you’re allergic to eggs?” I had filled out the form (as I always do), noting that I had a mild egg white allergy, so I said yes and repeated exactly what I’d written: “Mild egg white allergy.”

She then asked me if I’d had flu shots/vaccines before, and I of course said yes, and that I’d had no complications before. Then she got mad! She said, “You DON’T have an egg white allergy—don’t write that down!”

I was a little weirded out, so I said, “Well, when I eat egg whites I poop funny.” She did not appreciate this. She almost shouted, “That’s an egg white sensitivity!”

Now, I understand. She was trying to avoid sending me into anaphylactic shock. Maybe she was having an annoying day (I imagine Walgreen’s days are almost 99% annoying.) And? She’s right. I don’t have an egg white allergy, so this was obviously my bad.

But I’ve filled the form out exactly the same way every time since I discovered this sensitivity, so I was a little confused, and not a little miffed.

So when New Year’s Eve rolled around I started making deviled eggs, I decided I was going to eat a couple—eggs are delicious, and I avoid them like ~~the plague~~ I’m allergic to them, instead of merely being sensitive. What started out as a couple became several; then, since there were only two of us eating 16(!) deviled eggs I’d prepared (lol), several became eight. (My wife has self control; she had two.)

First of all, deviled eggs are so freaking good. Even bad deviled eggs are freaking amazing.

Second of all, I woke up the next day feeling terrible. Whereas in my twenties the new year would start off with a stupidly bad hangover, this year I woke up with a stupid egg white hangover. My stomach was all messed up, and my face was covered in eczema.

However, because the deviled eggs were so good, I’ve decided I’m going to do an egg recipe/suggestion every newsletter; jury’s out on whether I’ll eat these damn things. My thinking is eggs are a) delicious b) commonplace c) affordable and d) offer an opportunity to practice all sorts of little kitchen stuff.

Back to deviled eggs…

I assume you all know how to make deviled eggs. Boil eggs, separate yolks and whites, mash or buzz up the yolks with mayo, mustard, vinegar, and whatever else you like (shallots, garlic, spices, condiments, whatever), then stick that seasoned mixture back into the whites and eat as many as you physically can.

I did a couple things with these deviled eggs that I thought were nice; maybe you’d like to try them.

Mix the filling (egg yolks, emulsified condiments like mayo and mustard, the vinegar, a little good olive oil) first, and season it just a tad saltier than you’d like. You’re going for a smooth, pipeable paste (I just use a fork, but you can buzz it in a food processor or slap chop thinger if you’re making a lot). You should definitely be struggling with the desire to just eat it with a spoon.
Fold in finely diced shallot and celery and egg white, once it’s where you want it. This adds a little texture, but also pops of flavor (from the veg) and pops of blandness (from the egg white).
You should have as many deviled eggs as the number of eggs you start out with. If you start out with 8 boiled eggs, you should end up with 8 deviled eggs…that means four of the egg whites are getting tossed. (Use one or two halves for folding into the filling). That means each deviled egg has at least a half yolk in it.
Pipe the filling into the egg whites. Yes, this is fussy. No, it’s not that fussy. No, you don’t need a piping bag, just use a sandwich bag or ziploc. It really is worth it, not for the way it looks (although it of course looks better), but because you can really jam in a lot of filling into each egg white half.
Drizzle good olive oil on top. You can add whatever other garnish (idk, like bacon bits, or celery leaves), but that’s just gilding a gilded lily. The olive oil looks nice, but it’s mostly for dampening the saltiness of the filling. (Again, the filling should be plenty salty.)
Make it chaat-ish: For a couple of the eggs, I went in a different direction, and plopped a couple slices of hot green chili and a small bit of sev (thin chickpea crackers) into the egg white halves before piping in the filling. Then on top I dusted some chaat masala. These were excellent.

All right, have at it, have a (deviled) egg.

Let Him Cook

Made some chili. Chili is good; you should make some chili!

I don’t do anything special; I don’t even stack it with glutamates. Fry cumin in oil, add a chopped onion until almost browned, then throw in water and pressure cook the (soaked) beans (pinto/kidney) with a bay leaf and seeded dry chiles (ancho/guajillo/morita) until they’re tender (~13 min). While they’re cooking, I brown basically a big burger patty of ground meat real well on both side, but so it’s still raw in the center, then fry another chopped onion until almost browned, add in tomato paste, ground spices (cumin, coriander, smidge of cinnamon and fennel seed, smoked paprika, Mexican oregano) and garlic. When it’s all fragrant, I throw back in the big burger and break up the meat, then I buzz up some of the bean water, fishing out the now-reconstituted chiles and throwing them in the buzzer to make a chile-bean sludge, and add that into the meat pot along with the beans and the rest of the liquid and some tomato sauce.

Simmer ‘til it looks good.

I eat chili with a ton of raw chopped red onion and (hot) chilies on top, along with cubes of cheddar.

Also picked up some fresh bamboo the other day at a Chinese market. If you’ve never had it, it’s a delicacy deserving of the name, sort of like a cross between an artichoke heart and a water chestnut, but with a more fibrous crunch. They aren’t really comparable to the stuff that comes in cans or the vac-sealed pouches, since those are cooked so hard the texture is altered (softer) and the flavor is muted.

That said, you should know that if you do happen to try to eat them, they are toxic, or rather they contain cyanogens, which, when digested, become cyanide. That is, unless you process them correctly, which involves peeling them, boiling them in salted water for hours, rinsing them, and soaking them in fresh water for hours before eating them.

I knew all this, and yet I believe I made a mistake, because I felt very funny an hour after eating (a lot) of fresh bamboo, which I sliced and seared in beef fat and plopped onto tostadas. (These tostadas were so good, so I ate several of them.)

Looking back on the process, I think the issue was that although I did boil them for hours, I boiled them covered, which is not recommended. Otherwise, I followed best practices to the letter. (Also, I want to note, that I was never in danger; I just had exceptionally heinous gas for a night, and I felt a little weird.)

Don’t let my experience put you off; it’s one of the tastiest vegetables in the world. Also, you’d think boiling them for hours would make them mushy, but it doesn’t; they’re still SUPER crunchy.

Speaking of tostadas, on another night, I plopped some nice Portuguese tinned sardines on a tostada along with black beans, pickled onions, etc., etc., and it was fantastic. Not new, but new-to-me, and very convenient. Highly recommend.

Slightly work-related (I’ll throw up links to new stuff we’ve published next noodsletter, which will come sooner rather than later), but I’ve gotten back into bread because the last time I was visiting Seattle, my colleague Tim Chin had me taste these chicken fat dinner rolls he’d developed for a tasting menu, and they were incredibly good. (We’ll probably publish the recipe at some point.)

I asked for the recipe, but was not smart enough to scale it down, so I ended up with a lot of chicken fat-enriched milk bread dough (with a healthy measure of chicken bouillon powder for seasoning, too). This bread may be the best bread I’ve ever eaten, probably because it’s a MSG, salt, butter, AND chicken fat bomb. I made rolls, I rolled some into a shokupan loaf—incredible.

My kid liked it so much that one night she ate it before dinner, ate it with dinner, and then asked for a roll for dessert.

It was so good that I also had to make an egg-in-a-hole with it, fried in butter and chicken fat, of course. (This was also very good.)

Lastly, I made the farce from the Poulet Farci developed by my colleague Nicholas Gavin a week or two ago, just because I had bought some chicken thighs with no plan. While it may sound like a chore, the farce comes together very quickly, particularly if you skip the duxelles, and it is still very, very good; it is like a chicken boudin blanc.

I fried it up in a huge sausage patty for dinner and ate far too much, and with the leftovers I poached little meatballs for a miso ramen. When poached, they have a consistency that’s similar to fish or, more specifically, fluffy cuttlefish balls—wonderful. However, as with any noodle soup topping, what scans as perfectly seasoned on a plate can scan a little bland when surrounded by salty soup; something to remember for next time.

“News”

This column complaining (?) about Dry January in the NYT … being an Op-Ed columnist is tough, I get it, but idk about all that.

Problem with falling behind on noodsletter is I have to sort through a mountain of Dennis Lee’s posts. Should I highlight the pate made with baby food? The worst best cookbook ever? Or how about his day-job shenanigans: “I'd Rather Be Sick Than Eat Progresso Soup Drops Ever Again”? Or the Ruth’s Chris’s of dessert? Yes.

Once again I am asking you to read the second best food newsletter (after Dennis’s!):

We are going to exercise more, but we are going to do it in a way that will not change our bodies. We are going to lose weight, but we are not going to diet. We are going to prioritize “health” and “eating real food” and we will not be answering any follow-up questions about what those concepts mean.
It is in this season of confusion that I think of turkey bacon.

I like Tammie Teclamarian’s stuff a lot, particularly when she goes and tries something and finds it lackluster, like the milk bread egg salad sandwiches that are served with fried crusts at Conohen, a spot in Bed-Stuy (this was from a subscribers-only NY Mag newsletter):

The thing I kept seeing on my feed was egg salad on milk bread, cut into six rectangles with the trimmed crusts fried to a golden brown and served on the side like bread frites. The crusts were crunchy and enjoyable, while the $5 sandwich was not quite a let down. Alas, it was also not particularly special, with a thin filling of plain egg salad that didn’t reach the edges of the bread.

However, this specific newsletter had “Sandos” in the subject line, a word I detest. (My workplace has used it on occasion, much to my chagrin.) Just call it a sandwich?!? It’s a sandwich. We aren’t walking around calling jeans jeans-u or dresses one-piece-u or games game-u like anime-addled weebs, so why do so many restaurants (and people!) get in the “sando” game?

That said, if there is an odd Japanese-English confusion/mash-up we should all embrace, it’s calling things that are the best—“saikou” in Japanese, the “ou” denoting a long “o” sound— “psycho,” as the auto captioning translates the phrase in these videos made by the Japanese dentist on IG who ages fish in penicillin mold.

Speaking of sandWICHES, there’s a whole subreddit devoted to them, and there are psychos posting about their truly awful McDonald’s breakfast hacks.

Have to say I find the “Is it worth the [insane] price tag to go to [insanely expensive tasting menu restaurant]” genre of food media content completely pointless. Yes? No? Who cares? Not me, I can’t even afford to read these pieces, let alone think about eating at these restaurants!

Got this in an email from Heritage Foods, a meat purveyor, and, honestly, what the hell? “State of the Union”? The One Ring is the protagonist? “A brief glimpse”… of what? “Historical trajectory”? The learned fan is a fool!

Good subject line: Toast in the Shell

Good subject line, the second: Oops, all anchovies

I have been enjoying Best Food Blog, but I don’t know about this croissants-are-too-popular lament. That said, it’s nice that a publication is out there publishing stuff like this (that I can disagree with!).

If croissants and laminated pastry are your bag, you should follow Oldman Teh.