When life hands you quail eggs, buy salmon roe, too

Sun­day morn­ings, I make a big break­fast. Some­times it’s quiche, some­times it’s just a lot of bacon and eggs, some­times it’s David Eyre’s pan­cake (which, alas, does not adapt to gluten free– it’s still worth it.) My local gro­cery store (Mar­ket Bas­ket in Chelsea) has lots and lots of His­panic and “inter­na­tional” gro­ceries. And their fresh pro­duce is great. But as I went up and down the dairy aisle a few weeks ago, I noticed: Fresh Quail Eggs. $2.99 for 18. They came from Canada, so clearly they were qual­ity quail eggs (despite my never hav­ing eaten them before in my life, any­thing from Canada’s usu­ally good.)   And they bore Span­ish label­ing, which makes me won­der why they’re attrac­tive in the His­panic community.

Still, though.

Fresh quail eggs.

Did you know they hard-boil in 3 min­utes? And they’re ever-so pretty?

They are, how­ever, a bitch to peel.

It’s eas­ier, though, if you have a heart-shaped Beleek dish from your grandmother’s china cab­i­net. It’s clearly the high­est and best use of that dish. And the pale blue insides are a delight.

Obvi­ously, the appro­pri­ate condi­ment is some kind of wild-caught Amer­i­can fish roe. Salmon roe looks pretty in Nana’s Water­ford olive dish.

And then, of course, you’ve got to make a whole pile of small crepes with fresh herbs in the bat­ter. (My recipe came from Amanda Hesser’s Essen­tial NYT Cook­book, gluten-full and all. Try their cock­tails. So yummy.)

Put some sour cream, chopped red onion, and more of the herbs from your pan­cake bat­ter on the table, cut up the lit­tle eggs you’ve so painstak­ingly peeled (Hint: Pinch the bot­tom of the egg, where the air pocket forms. You’ll only curse twice per egg.) and assem­ble your crepes. They might look some­thing like this:

Guz­zle a lot of cham­pagne for me, since we don’t drink Chez Wal­dorf and Statler, as you assem­ble each lit­tle crepe and decide: eh, they taste like reg­u­lar eggs, just smaller but still decide to buy them again because gosh dar­nit, small food is cute, and you really ought to be eat­ing more fish roe, despite the tremen­dous expense.  Then you can swan around all day know­ing you’re prob­a­bly the only per­son of your acquain­tance who had caviar for break­fast, and, well– some days that’s val­i­da­tion we all need.  (Baby, you’re worth it.)

Did I men­tion the peels were pretty?