[Ag-eq] Article: Chickens/Eggs/Recipes

[Tracy Carcione]

Thanks Susan, that was very interesting.  $99 seems a lot to spend on a 
chick that might not even survive.  Is there a warranty?  Is the survival 
rate for chicks pretty good?
I still fancy the rainbow chickens you wrote about a while back.
Have you decided on what kind you will get?
Tracy


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Susan Roe" <dogwoodfarm at verizon.net>
To: "Agricultural and Equestrean Division List" <ag-eq at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 7:19 AM
Subject: [Ag-eq] Article: Chickens/Eggs/Recipes


> Straight From the Home Coop. By JULIA MOSKIN. FOR newly hatched chicken 
> enthusiasts, the first egg from your own hens is a small miracle. You want 
> to dip
> it in gold,' said the writer Susan Orlean, who keeps nine hens at her home 
> in Columbia County, N.Y. Then comes the second egg: enough for a 
> triumphant breakfast. But when the whole coop starts laying, she said, the 
> supply of eggs quickly turns into an 'I Love Lucy'-style conveyor belt 
> scene, bringing absurd, unmanageable excess. Ms. Orlean scrambles them 
> into a pile for brunch or dinner, sprinkled with Indian spices, slivered 
> almonds and unsweetened coconut. People will eat three and four eggs at a 
> time that way, without blinking,' she said. It's not unusual for food 
> lovers to toy with the notion of
> adding chickens to a thriving garden or building a rooftop coop. Now the 
> novelty has become reality: despite coyotes, foxes and the occasional 
> cage-break,
> many urbanites and suburbanites are raising their own eggs. And many small 
> farmers who supply restaurants with produce have been expanding into 
> poultry,
> making farm eggs ubiquitous on restaurant menus.
>
> The eggs that were once scrubbed from the standard American breakfast over 
> concerns about cholesterol
> have made a triumphant return as high-end appetizers, served atop anything 
> and everything. At the North End Grill, an ambitious new restaurant in 
> Battery
> Park City, eggs rate their own section on the dinner menu.
>
> There are no hard numbers on how many people keep chickens, but hatcheries 
> report a boom in
> business in the last five years. The recession has helped, the local food 
> movement has helped and the green movement has helped,' said Paul 
> Bradshaw, the
> owner of Greenfire Farms in Havana, Fla., who specializes in rare breeds 
> like Swedish flower and French Marans, which lay lustrous chocolate-brown 
> eggs
> that the writer Ian Fleming designated as the preferred breakfast of James 
> Bond.
>
> Martha Stewart made chickens fashionable in the 1990s, showcasing pale
> blue and green eggs from her South American Araucanas in her magazine. 
> Although egg color does not affect taste, it is an attraction; among Mr. 
> Bradshaw's
> most desirable hens are British cream legbars, which lay bright, smooth 
> blue eggs that sell in London's chic food markets for 1 euro each, or 
> about $1.30.
> (A female legbar chick costs $99, compared with about $2 for a standard 
> leghorn.)
>
> Internet commerce has made it easy to order hatching eggs and day-old 
> chicks; Web sites, like those of Greenfire Farms and Murray McMurray 
> Hatchery in Iowa, have live video and gorgeous photos of birds, plumage 
> and vividly
> colored eggs.
>
> It's my new J. Crew catalog,' said Jana Martin, a writer who lives outside 
> Woodstock, N.Y., and started raising Buff Orpington hens last year.
>
> Keeping chickens is legal in many cities and has taken off as part of the 
> urban farming movement. JustFood, a nonprofit group that encourages 
> sustainable
> and local agriculture, has an educational program called City Chicken, 
> which teaches the basics to New Yorkers: since 2007, the classes have 
> routinely
> filled up and the schedule is constantly expanding.
>
> In the spring, you can watch the color of the yolks deepen from week to 
> week, and the taste changes,
> too,' said Cathy Erway, a graduate of the program who keeps hens on a 
> rooftop in Red Hook, Brooklyn. (For those who want to keep hens inside an 
> apartment,
> Mr. Bradshaw recommends the Olandsk dwarf hen, about the size of a 
> grapefruit, which lays eggs that fry up to the size of a silver-dollar 
> pancake.)
>
> In the last month, backyard chickens across the country have begun laying 
> again. Left to their own rhythms, hens slow down or stop laying eggs 
> altogether
> in the winter, because their reproductive cycle is linked to daylight. For 
> centuries, the simultaneous return of eggs and the sun was seen as a 
> quasi-magical
> coincidence; it is no wonder eggs are central to ancient spring 
> celebrations like Easter, Passover and Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which 
> begins on the
> spring equinox.
>
> At this time of year, the difficulty becomes not so much keeping the hens, 
> but keeping up with them. In high season, a good layer like a Rhode Island 
> red or leghorn can lay an egg every day. Ms. Erway uses up the eggs by 
> making lunch for the staff at Sixpoint Brewery, where she works.
> I put sliced hard-boiled eggs in banh mi,' she said, referring to the 
> French-Vietnamese baguette sandwiches, stuffed with pickled vegetables and 
> red chile
> sauce. And I'm Chinese-American, so it's second nature for me to add an 
> egg or two if I'm stir-frying rice or noodles.
>
> You have to get creative,' said
> Ian Knauer, a food writer who had 18 laying hens last year on his family's 
> farm in Pennsylvania. For Mr. Knauer, who lives alone in Brooklyn and 
> tends
> the farm on weekends with his family, that meant almost eight dozen eggs a 
> week. When they start piling up, I get out the big jar,' he said. Beets 
> and
> eggs, pickled together in a hot-pink brine, are a standard Pennsylvania 
> Dutch recipe Mr. Knauer has adapted into a watercress and egg salad, using 
> a spoonful
> of shallot-scented brine in the vinaigrette.
>
> In a new book, 'The Farm,' he chronicles a year of cooking with mostly 
> farm-grown ingredients, including a
> simple dinner of soft-boiled eggs with peppery greens, ricotta and black 
> walnuts from trees around the farmhouse. The Knauers have farmed in 
> Knauertown
> since the 18th century and, like most farmers, have always kept a flock of 
> chickens. But from the 1920s to the 1950s, egg farming became specialized. 
> Electric
> lighting meant that lights could be kept on day and night, so hens never 
> stopped laying; refrigeration meant that eggs could be kept fresh for 
> weeks and
> transported around the country. By the 1970s, eggs had become a standard 
> supermarket item with no particular season, region or source attached. 
> Enter the
> real-food revolution, and the notion that raising your own food brought 
> ethical, nutritional and culinary advantages. Knowing you can raise your 
> own eggs
> quite easily makes factory farms seem even more unnecessary,' Ms. Martin 
> said. For cooks like her, eggs are particularly helpful in the effort to 
> nudge
> meat away from the center of the plate. This is the time of year when I 
> start looking through old cookbooks to see what the farm wives would do,' 
> said
> Kristin Hernandez, who keeps a dozen hens in her backyard in Austin, Tex. 
> Her roommates are all vegetarian or vegan, she said, but even the vegans 
> eat
> the house-raised eggs because they know that the birds are healthy and 
> well cared for. They are like pets who happen to bring us breakfast,' she 
> said.
> Although organic and free-range eggs are now widely available, they do not 
> always taste different from the standard commercial product; home-raised 
> eggs
> have noticeably better flavor and texture. The yolks of eggs from 
> well-fed, well-exercised hens are as orange-yellow as a New York taxi. 
> They have what
> Mr. Bradshaw calls 'muscle tone': thick walls and a rich, intense taste. 
> The whites are never runny, and they stand up immediately when you whip 
> them,'
> Ms. Martin said. Even plain scrambled eggs are different: they have a 
> sweetness, a freshness and a richness to them. Then there is the question 
> of age.
> Eggs can be sold commercially for up to 45 days after they are packed, so 
> long as they are kept refrigerated, according to Agriculture Department 
> regulations.
> (Eggs keep well until washed for market, because they have a natural 
> coating that is sterile and waterproof.) But those who raise chickens say 
> that the
> flavor -- with nuances of grass, earth, nuts and of course, chicken -- is 
> at its peak when the egg is first laid, before it is refrigerated. 
> Jennifer Trainer
> Thompson, who works at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, has 
> just published 'The Fresh Egg Cookbook,' an outgrowth of keeping a dozen 
> hens
> at her home in Williamstown. I wasn't thinking of the culinary 
> opportunities at first,' she said. She saw the chickens more as an outdoor 
> activity and
> teaching tool for her kids. But as the eggs mounted up, she began trolling 
> through cookbooks and consulting family and friends for recipes using 
> multiple
> eggs. An ideal post-Easter recipe, from her Midwestern mother-in-law, is a 
> breakfast casserole that calls for 18 hard-boiled eggs, baked with cheese 
> sauce
> and topped with crumbled bacon. (For the best results when peeling 
> hard-boiled eggs, start with eggs that are not freshly laid, but have been 
> refrigerated
> for a week or more.) Her Mediterranean take on a weeknight dinner is 
> poached eggs, served over thick yogurt with toasted pita bread and a 
> trickle of hot,
> herb-infused butter. For Joe Dizney, a Web designer in the Hudson Valley, 
> living with a flock of Australorp hens has left a different imprint. He'll 
> break
> an egg into simmering beef stews and bean soups, fry a couple in butter to 
> top sauteed spring greens like the red-veined sorrel he bought at a recent 
> farmers'
> market, and coddle them to serve with the wild mushrooms he gathers in the 
> woods near his house. 'Put an egg on it,' ' he said. That's become my 
> mantra.
> Recipe: Poached Eggs With Mint and Yogurt Adapted from 'The Fresh Egg 
> Cookbook' by Jennifer Trainer Thompson (Storey Publishing) Time: About 1 
> hour 1 cup
> plain Greek yogurt, 2 percent milk fat or whole 1 small garlic clove, 
> finely minced Salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons butter 6 
> fresh mint
> leaves 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika 1/2 teaspoon hot red-pepper flakes 1 
> tablespoon white vinegar 8 eggs Toasted pita bread or another flatbread, 
> for serving.
> 1. In a small bowl, stir the yogurt and garlic together. Season to taste 
> with salt and pepper and set aside for 30 minutes to 1 hour. 2. When ready 
> to
> cook, use a large spoon to divide the yogurt on four serving plates, 
> making large dollops. Use the back of a spoon to spread each dollop into a 
> large oval,
> big enough to hold two eggs. 3. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium 
> heat until it foams. Add mint, paprika and red pepper flakes and stir 
> until
> fragrant. Turn off the heat and keep warm. 4. In a large, deep skillet, 
> combine two inches of water and the vinegar. Bring to a simmer. Crack the 
> eggs
> gently into the water. Simmer until softly cooked, about 3 minutes. Using 
> a slotted spoon, lift eggs out one at a time, holding a paper towel under 
> the
> spoon to avoid dripping water onto the yogurt. Place two eggs on each 
> plateful of yogurt. Remove mint leaves from the warm spiced butter, then 
> use a spoon
> to drizzle butter over the eggs. Grind black pepper onto each egg, and 
> serve immediately with hot toasted pita bread. Yield: 4 servings Recipe: 
> Lemon Pudding
> Cake Adapted from 'The Farm,' by Ian Knauer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) 
> Time: 1 hour 4 large eggs, separated 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest 
> 1/3 cup
> lemon juice 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup 
> all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1 1/2 cups whole milk. 1. Place 
> a large
> roasting pan on a rack in the center of the oven. Fill the pan halfway 
> with water. With the pan inside, heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 
> 8-inch
> square or round baking dish. 2. In a large bowl, whisk together the egg 
> yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice and butter. In another bowl, stir together 
> the sugar,
> flour and salt. Whisk half the flour mixture into the egg yolks, then half 
> the milk. Whisk in remaining flour mixture, then remaining milk. 3. Whip 
> the
> egg whites until soft peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter. 
> 4. Pour batter into the buttered dish. Place the dish in the pan of water 
> in the
> oven. Bake until the cake is set, about 45 minutes. Yield: 6 to 8 
> servings. Recipe: Soft-Boiled Eggs With Watercress and Walnut-Ricotta 
> Crostini 3 tablespoons
> unsalted butter 4 slices sourdough or other chewy bread 1/2 cup walnut 
> pieces 1/2 cup fresh ricotta or farmer cheese 2 tablespoons lemon juice 
> Salt and
> freshly ground black pepper 4 cold eggs 2 cups watercress Extra-virgin 
> olive oil or walnut oil, for serving. 1. In a large heavy skillet, melt 
> two tablespoons
> of the butter over medium heat. Add the bread slices and toast, turning 
> occasionally, until both sides are well browned, 3 to 4 minutes. (Reduce 
> heat as
> needed to prevent scorching.) 2. Remove the bread and add the remaining 
> tablespoon butter to the skillet. Add the walnuts and toast them, 
> stirring, until
> lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Transfer walnuts to a food processor and 
> let cool. Add ricotta, 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon each salt 
> and
> pepper. Pulse just until well combined. 3. Place the eggs in a small 
> saucepan and cover with lukewarm water. (Hot water on cold eggs will crack 
> the shells.)
> Over high heat, bring the water just to a boil. Immediately turn off the 
> heat, cover the pan and let stand for 2 minutes. Transfer the pot to the 
> sink
> and run cold water over the eggs for about 30 seconds. Peel the eggs under 
> cold running water. 4. In a bowl, toss watercress with the remaining 
> tablespoon
> lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Spread walnut ricotta evenly 
> over the toasts, then top with watercress. Place 1 egg on each toast and 
> grind pepper
> on top. Using a small, sharp knife, gently cut each egg open to break the 
> yolk, letting it run down to dress the watercress. Drizzle with oil, if 
> using,
> and serve. Yield: 2 servings. Recipe: MJ's Egg Casserole 4 tablespoons 
> butter, plus extra for buttering pan 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour 
> 1 cup
> cream 1 cup milk 2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar, lightly packed 1/4 cup 
> chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram 1/4 teaspoon 
> dried thyme
> 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder Pinch cayenne 18 hard boiled eggs, peeled and 
> thinly sliced 1 pound bacon, cooked, drained of fat and crumbled Toast, 
> for serving.
> 1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. 2. 
> In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it foams. Whisk in 
> the
> flour until smooth. Lower the heat and slowly pour in the cream and milk. 
> Heat until steaming, whisking often. Add the cheese and whisk until 
> melted. Add
> the parsley, marjoram, thyme, garlic powder and cayenne. 3. In the 
> prepared dish, make layers of egg slices, bacon and sauce, ending with 
> sauce. Cover
> and bake 40 minutes. (To make ahead, refrigerate covered casserole 
> overnight. Remove from the refrigerator 1 hour before baking, and add 20 
> minutes to
> baking time.) Let rest 5 to 10 minutes before serving with hot toast. 
> Yield: 8 to 10 servings. PHOTOS: NESTED: Soft-boiled eggs, with watercress 
> on crostini,
> show off the brilliant color of yolks from well-fed hens. (PHOTOGRAPH BY 
> RACHEL BARRETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(D1); HEN FRUIT: Jennifer Trainer 
> Thompson
> prepares thick yogurt to accompany poached eggs; Paul Bradshaw, the owner 
> of Greenfire Farms in Havana, Fla., with a Bielefelder chicken; once eggs 
> start
> piling up, Ian Knauer pickles them in a hot-pink brine with beets. Another 
> recipe is soft-boiled eggs on crostini. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY NATHANIEL BROOKS 
> FOR
> THE NEW YORK TIMES; MARK WALLHEISER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; RACHEL BARRETT 
> FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(D7) .
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