Vic Socotra

12 February 2009

Egg Salad

(egg salad)

One thing I have found is that a couple work-around-the-clock sessions really takes it out of me these days. Proposal season means planning endlessly, and writing so hard that the fingers bleed.

The fatigue that ensues means I am probably not ready for the post-attack phase of my survival plan.

I should devise a plan for that, being a Joint Staff-trained officer, but I am too tired.

I remember being able to work on a nuclear target list for thirty hours at a stretch, back at the dawn of the computer age, under the washed out florescent lights of the USS Forrestal, and be ready to party like crazy when we got done with the drill. Atomic Holocaust to Happy Hour, no problem.

Now I discover that with the passing of decades I am just the other end of the spectrum from the earnest planner I was- a soft target.

I fell asleep in my chair last night, rousing around two as the big-screen announced that my on-demand services had terminated. I went to bed about two, hearing the wind rise and scrub along the flank of Big Pink.

I got back down in order to sleep until almost seven. The clock radio mixed Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin and the issuance of new pennies all together in a stream; I know someone was born, someone had a great idea, and I don’t have enough of them. All the ideas were scrambled like morning eggs.

Now I am groggy and out of sorts- not at all the sturdy Program Manager you want to see over the breakfast bagel at the office.

On the upside, there was an epiphany late yesterday, and I cradled it mentally, waiting to pounce on the next opportunity. A pal down in Key West sent me some pictures of things more obscene than the Bacon Torpedo I cooked last week. In fact, one of them was a picture of a Torpedo done in a wrap of dinner pastires- a Torpedo Wellington, if you will.

I was so shaken that I went to my rack of cookbooks to see if I could counteract the mental cholesterol that the image caused. I picked up Kenny Shopsin’s “Eat Me,” which I have been meaning to explore.

Kenny is the quirky king of diner food up in New York City, and famously observed that he made a decent living out of selling a variety of flavored mayonnaise on bread. His style of comfort cooking is much the rage these days, since comfort now seems in jeopardy.

That was one thing I wanted to check. I have vegetarian friends who eat that way for health and sanity reasons. When I am with them there are days at a time when things like bacon and a nice marbled steak are addressed only with a Cross and a fresh bulb of garlic to ward them off.

Egg Salad is no common ground for the more hysterical Vegans, since that too is murder of a sort, but I have little truck with the ideologues of either end of the spectrum. One of the great disappointments of my life is that the egg salad I make often turns out like a yellow puree, a paste rather than a textured, nuanced meal on a fresh chunk of baguette with Bibb lettuce, a zesty pickle or two, and fresh ground pepper and sea-salt.

I read about cooking hard-cooked eggs in a manner that permits the easy removal of the shell. Simple, really, and not dramatically different from the admonitions contained in the venerable Joy of Cooking.

Kenny set me straight. Tiny bubbles around the white or brown orbs, then remove from heat and let stand for nine minutes. Then plunge under cold water.

I can do the eggs, though it took a few dozen to master the technique and I always have one or two in the fridge to slice into a garden salad, or a singleton deviled egg as a snack, or tuck into the lunch sack to augment a sandwich. Lunch costs ten bucks, if you buy it from people in Kenny's line of work near the office.

Of course, I am supposed to be spending, these days, right? No way. That was $200 a month in walking-around money. Not responsible in these times, even if all the bus-boys and short order cooks are laid off.

Any day you don’t learn something you start to die a little, and I got my life-lesson with this. Separate the cooked yolks from the white egg flesh. Take your mayonnaise- Kenny says Hellman’s would do, but imagine a garlic mayo or fresh basil- and mix it with the firm yellow yolks until you have a sauce of just the right consistency.

Then, and only then, lightly fold in the egg whites in a manner that retains their texture and don’t stir so damned hard.

Did you ever consider placing a layer of decent potato ships on top just as you prepared the sandwich on really cool bread? A burst of salty crunch to go with the comfortable taste of a prosperous past?

Revelations are hard to come by these days, at least good ones. Bon appetite.

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