While the perfect omelette might only be minutes in the making, time can work wonders on an egg.
Hamine eggs are an ancient Egyptian Jewish delicacy – eggs are simmered in water with onion skins and coffee grinds, on as low a heat as possible for a good 5-8 hours. The shells turn a beautiful burnt ochre. Tim Halket suggests these as a side for a chicken tagine.
Even more vibrant in hue is the beet pickled egg – Diana Henry gives a good recipe for these in Sugar Salt Smoke, using sweetened white-wine vinegar and beetroot with a seasoning of coriander, cinnamon and chilli.
For pickled eggs of a more Asian leaning, Tim Anderson, in his book Nanban, makes a marinade of dashi and lapsang souchong tea, with star anise, soy, mirin and rice vinegar. Tea eggs are a Chinese tradition – the shells kept on, but carefully cracked so the eggs end up as beautifully marbled as they are infused with flavour. In Japan, eggs are often steeped in soy sauce or miso mixture, both imparting the whites with umami‑filled savour.
In Jutland, on the German-Danish border, pickled eggs are a bar snack called solaeg. The eggs are boiled with red onion skins, much like their Egyptian counterparts, then brined, the shells cracked, with a red onion, caraway seeds and herbs. The delicacy here lies in the dark yolk and how it is enjoyed: shell removed, egg halved, the whole dressed with spices, herbs, oils, chilli, mustard and vinegar, with the aquavit to hand.
Lacto-fermentation brings a whole raft of flavour possibilities to an egg. Submerge hard-boiled eggs into a jar of pickle brine or pack them into a pot of already fermented veg – say, sauerkraut or kimchi – and leave in the fridge for a few days. For food safety reasons, the eggs must be hard-boiled, and the brine or veg already fermented – see phickle.com for recipes and methods.
The ultimate long-term egg, of course, is the century, or thousand-year, egg. While duck eggs are usually used, hens’ and quails’ will do too. The process is, as the name suggests, arduous, and involves items that push the boundaries of what constitutes an ingredient: salt and clay, ash, quicklime and rice hulls, or in the modern-day version, calcium hydroxide, sodium carbonate and salt. If this meeting of cookery and what sounds like agricultural construction appeals, Corey Lee of Benu fame does a good job of showing you how to go about it.
