There's more than one way to poach an egg
Egg poached in curried okra stew
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Shopping: none
Our okra plants are still going strong. I can barely keep up. I’d collected a big bowl of pods and yesterday spent some time in the kitchen turning them into some of our favorite dishes, one of them this curry-seasoned stew with our own home-grown squash, sweet potato leaves collected from the Washington Youth Garden and coconut milk.
I couldn’t wait to dig into a bowl of this highly aromatic stew this morning and turned it into breakfast by dropping an egg into the pot while I was reheating my stew. The egg poached very nicely with the lid on. What a delicious discovery, spooning the yolk as it ran into the coconut-curry juices.
Here’s a tip: don’t skimp on the coconut milk. Buy the best you can find. A good coconut milk adds depth and richness to the stew. If you are a real curry afficianado, rather than the curry powder from your spice rack, try adding some green Thai curry paste. The original recipe calls for red pepper flakes. But in my most recent batch, I used a Hatch chili pepper that had completely ripened sitting on our kitchen counter. It brought a whole new level of flavor. Remove the seed and veins before cutting the pepper into small pieces.
The egg comes from hens that forage on grass on a farm in West Virginia. They are currently $4.25 a dozen at the local farmers market.
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
$4.25 a dozen?! Wow. I mean, I’d pay it, because I know my brother in Portland, OR is paying $5.00 a dozen for cackleberries. However, here in my little hometown on the outskirts of Roanoke, VA , I’m still only paying $1.50 for a dozen of beautiful healthy yard bird eggs. I not meaning to rub it in, just saying.
Chef, that is the going price here in the nation’s capitol. We were much happier when we got our eggs through our winter CSA share. But we grow plenty of our own vegetables and didn’t need the CSA any more. I envy your more rural economy. On the other hand, $1.50 isn’t doing your local farmer much good.