Soft Scrambled Eggs with Ricotta

Last week we had a big magazine photo shoot at our house and my former Bon Appétit colleague Jeanne Kelley styled the food. She brought along some eggs from her chickens and after the shoot was over, she left a bowlful for me…

…including one of her chicken’s palest blue eggs, which are the subject of Jeanne’s award-winnning cookbook, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes.

Jonathan Gold has said “Jeanne Kelley is not like you and me … the eggs laid by her chickens could blind you if you looked directly into the yolk.” He’s not kidding.

With eggs this fresh, it’s best to do as little as possible. I heated up a tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium heat. I whisked the eggs with a little salt and some chives snipped from our garden, and then when the butter was bubbly poured the eggs into the pan, tilting the pan occasionally to let the runny parts slowly cook.

After a couple minutes, when the eggs were just barely cooked, I removed from heat and folded in some fresh ricotta and sprinkled with fleur de sel. There is nothing quite like a perfectly scrambled egg, particularly if it was laid by one of Jeanne’s chickens.

Yes, You Want to Make This

Anytime you see a recipe by Jeanne Kelley—whether it’s her cookbook Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes, in the pages of Bon Appétit or Cooking Light magazines, or on her Eat Fresh blog—make it. A few nights ago we tried these Pork Chops with Chiles Rellenos and Ancho Sauce from the August issue of Bon Appétit, and had our friends Booth and Adam over for dinner. The four of us are serious chiles rellenos freaks, and have together spent marg-fueled nights devouring hop-the-next-flight-they’re-that-good rellenos at the Sayulita Café in Mexico. But I digress. For this recipe, both the chiles and pork are done on the grill, which is a lot less work than going the whole battered and fried route w/ the rellenos, and certainly a hell of lot time efficient than traveling to Mexico. We also had some leftover potato filling from these rellenos, which we used the next night for potato tacos.

Here’s the potato filling, couldn’t be easier. Essentially boiled Yukon Gold potatoes, toasted cumin seeds, fresh oregano (which is growing out of control in the back yard—how do I prune that stuff?), and sharp white cheddar. Like I said, great in a tortilla the next day.

Before grilling, you do have to roast the chiles over an open flame, and then you stuff with the above mixture and place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Then transfer the foil and chiles directly onto the grill.

Oh, and a word about the pork. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’ll take my pork chop with nothing more than a little cracked salt and pepper on it—particularly if we’re talking Heritage Foods chops. But this recipe proves an exception—the chile powder and salt rub is fantastic, and that ancho sauce sublime.