Egg-xtraordinary

April is a great season to consider the egg. Both Gourmet.com and Martha Stewart Living Magazine have features this month about all the different types of eggs available beyond the standard chicken variety. Even Olive, a food magazine from the UK, starts off its April Starters section (which tracks food shopping, trends and news) with a beautiful picture of blue free range eggs. Maybe the editors of these publications were just all chicken egg-ed out following Easter and decided to look around the world for some variation on the traditional egg. Or maybe it was the emerging season of spring showers (I am talking about the baby and wedding variety here, not the rain producing type) that led to the interest in the most versatile of brunch foods. In any case we are treated to some delightful egg facts and pictures.

Gourmet.com features a delightfully informative slide show on different types of eggs - from chicken to iguana to the chocolate variety. Each image is adorned with a few informative sentences about the particular type of egg and its uses around the world. Let me just add here that I learned things about the harvesting of iguana eggs to make them truly unpalatable to me..... as if the idea of eating a lizard egg wasn't bad enough by itself.

Martha Stewart Living features a delightful article called Exemplary Eggs . It includes many beautiful egg dish images with the recipes to follow in the back portion of the magazine. Almost all of the recipes, of course, use the standard chicken variety of eggs but there is one recipe for Noodles with Poached Duck Egg that gets into the more exotic. (As soon as I locate some duck eggs I will let you know how the recipe tastes.)

So thinking forward, why not think about adding a few new egg recipes to your recipe library? Eggs are so versatile you can add almost any ingredient to them and come up with a delicious dish - usually in just minutes. You can dress them up for company (think a fancy crepe wrapped asparagus for a Saturday morning brunch) or dress them down for good old comfort food (think rich and egg-y french toast with lots of butter and syrup). Either way the chances are good that your egg dish will be a hit! And if you are feeling particularly gourmet you can always try that Noodles with Poached Duck Egg recipe. Just let us know how it tastes.