Egg Me On

Let me say this simply. The egg is the single most versatile food out there. You can do more things with eggs than with any other food source. Aside from being pretty tasty in their own right, they can also be combined with other things to make some pretty interesting dishes.

One of the reasons that the egg is used in so many different ways is that the protein in eggs, and there is a LOT of protein in eggs, is virtually indistinguishable from glue. That's why eggs stick to pans when you’re cooking them. The proteins work their way into all the little cracks on the surface of the pan and then once they have left their liquid state, stay there. Fats and non-stick surfaces are the best way to combat this. Depending on what I’m cooking, sometimes I will use one or the other and sometimes, like in the case of omelets, I’ll use both.

The point is, learning to cook an egg properly in all of its different forms may be the best things you can learn about cooking. You’ll learn techniques for the stove and the oven and when and how to use the different parts of the egg. Now, you may be asking yourself why am I talking about eggs and what does that have to do with Cinco de Mayo, the topic of conversation I brought up yesterday. The answer is that we are going to be talking about an egg custard in my up coming posts, one that works wonderfully as a dessert. In other words, we’ll be talking about flan.