Which Came First: The Chicken or the Egg?
Wow. People really wait for eggs.
We’d heard the line builds early, and last weekend, we saw it. We went to the University District Farmers Market to wait in line at the Skagit River Ranch booth for some highly coveted organic eggs from free-range chickens. Everyone raved about how delicious they are, how the yolks sit up, etc. Then one of the produce vendors, overhearing the discussion, gave us a tip, suggesting we walk back to the entrance where a new vendor was debuting in the District: Stokesberry Sustainable Farms.
Jerry and Janelle Stokesberry farm in Olympia, but make it to Seattle farmers markets several times per week in season. Their mission statement: "To provide healthy food to our community in a way that also fosters positive growth within our community both for the earth and the people."
Provide they did. We got a dozen small eggs ($4 per dozen), and then in the course of conversation, got a chicken as well. An hour later, we ate some eggs sunny side up, and the yolks really do sit up and have great texture to them. So we put them through a tougher test the next day: We made tamago kake gohan—a bowl of hot rice with an egg cracked over (kake) it. (It’s sometimes called tamago bukkake gohan, where "bukkake" means splashed, as you might know from another context.) It’s a typical, quick Japanese breakfast. Add some soy sauce (we used some fabulous Bourbon Barrel Soy Sauce—the first microbrewed soy sauce made in the States), mix it, and the heat from the rice cooks the eggs—to some degree. Very oishii. As was the chicken, which we roasted using a combination of recipes from Ruth Reichl and Tyler Florence. But, in this case, it was the chicken that came first.
