My Similarities with a Fox

My first meal on a weekend will never be a salad. Monday through Friday, sure, I’ll put together something healthy. Something with kale. Something with yogurt and berries. But all I want Saturday revolves around the difficult task of bringing eggs to the farmers market.

This Saturday Truck Patch farm only brought about 20 cartons of eggs; they usually have triple. I grabbed a dozen right away. Weeks earlier, when Brian the farmer didn’t show up with many eggs, he told me the reason was it was too hot. The chickens wouldn’t lay. And I was like, dude, I totally get it. I wouldn’t want to do much of anything in this heat, much less squirt out a fucking egg. I figured the same thing happened this week. But no. Another natural occurrence took place – a predator ate the eggs. Brian found broken shells.

I can’t blame that fox or coyote for lapping up all those runny yolks.

Luckily though, they saved some for me.

Yolky Sun with Zucchini Rays

I wanted to find an easy way to incorporate a vegetable into my fried egg. Remembering a runny “omelet” with asparagus and goat cheese from a Jose Andres cookbook, I decided to this time bind zucchini to my egg dish with the whites of the fried egg, leaving a circle in the center for the yolk to touch the buttered pan.

I thinly sliced the zuke to create a disk, then let it quickly brown in some butter on a hot pan. I flipped the zukes once brown spots appeared, adding a touch more butter to the pan. When the second side started to brown, I created a space for the yolk and let the egg whites drape around and over the zucchini disks. Treat this just like frying any other egg and remove to your desired definition of done.

Season with salt and pepper. Serve with toast, spread with scallion butter. (Dice scallions, mash into butter. Season with salt if butter isn’t already salted. Or just re-salt.)