Cooking Basics

While at the Marin farmers market this past weekend, I made friends with Jackie, an adorable farmer who sells eggs under the brand By Cracky It's Jackie's Farm Fresh Eggs. At the end of the market, a few stragglers stopped by her booth requesting chicken eggs. She responded, "Nope, sorry. The weather has been too hot for the chickens to lay eggs. But I have plenty of guinea fowl eggs. They're producing like crazy!" Most refused her offer and walked away disappointed.

While Jackie was gracious enough to give me a dozen guinea fowl eggs at the end of her farmers market run, I'll admit my initial response was not one of excitement: I'd recently encountered a slightly sulfuric-smelling batch of chicken eggs and hadn't quite recovered from the experience. I assumed the eggs from the guinea fowl, which sounded exotic and complicated, must have possessed an equally game taste to match.

"What should I do with them?" I asked Jackie uneasily. "Just cook them like chicken eggs. But remember, the shells are tougher than chicken eggs. So whack 'em to crack 'em, and I mean, really whack 'em," she replied. With that, I gathered my carton of eggs and got cracking. See what guinea fowl eggs look like inside when you read more.

Recently a friend gave me two dozen eggs from her homegrown chickens. Since farm fresh eggs are one of life's little pleasures, I didn't want to waste any part of these eggs. I also wanted to do more with the eggs than eat them fried.

I wound up preparing a pavlova, a dessert that requires egg whites to create a fluffy and marshmallowy meringue. However, I couldn't throw away the precious yolks, so I came up with five ways to use them. Find out what they are after the break.

When looking to round out a meal come brunch, lunch, or dinnertime, I stick to a simple motto: put an egg on it (not to be confused with "put a bird on it" . . . ). While fried and scrambled are nice, I hold a special place in my heart for the oozing yolks of a perfectly poached egg, but until now I hadn't thought of them as portable. It turns out, with an ingenious kitchen hack, these luscious eggs can become a protein-packed part of the brown-bag lunch rotation. Keep reading to find out the simple secret.