a pinch of salt, a smidgen of black pepper, and a cloud of powdered ginger
a sprig of chervil
a small quantity of chopped chives
Preparation:
For the eggs:
Spread out a sheet of plastic wrap and coat with a little oil.
Deposit 1 egg on the plastic sheet with 6 drops of truffle juice.
Add 3 drops of duck fat and a little salt.
Pull the edges together and tie tightly (may rest in the fridge for 1 day).
Cook in 100 degree Celsius water for 5 minutes.
Rest for one minute, then carefully unmold from the plastic wrap and set aside.
For the egg yolk:
Mix the egg yolks carefully, add olive oil to emulsify, and season.
For the mousse:
Mix all ingredients in a blender, then pass through a fine sieve.
Warm before serving.
For the tablespoon of mushrooms:
Mince the mushrooms finely.
Sauté together with chopped garlic and a few drops of extra virgin olive oil.
For the bread crumbs:
Toast the breadcrumbs to a golden brown in a dry frying pan.
Add liquid ingredients and stir over a low fire until everything has reached the consistency of crumbs.
For the vinaigrette:
Take the seeds of the grapes and dice them. Add olive oil, rice vinegar, and seasonings.
Presentation:
Place the warm egg on one corner of the plate.
On top of the egg, paint the egg yolk mixture.
Top with vinaigrette.
Below the egg, running from the bottom of the plate towards the egg, place two parallel lines, one each of breadcrumbs and mousse.
Perpendicular to the lines, place the tablespoon and fill with the mushrooms.
Place a sprig of chervil to the right of the two lines, below the tablespoon.
Decorate the egg with chopped chives.1
As an expert, as THE expert on eggs, as the egg amongst eggs, the recipe that was realized and then erected upon a perch in New York City, not a Big Apple, a Big Egg, I can say that the Flor de Huevo y Tartufo en Grasa de Oca con Txistorra de Tatiles is itself sufficient reason for a voyage into my innards, and a memory of its subtle flavors the grounds for suffering the indignity of all that will befall us.
Chapter 22
Jessica had watched John create the Flor de Huevo y Tartufo en Grasa de Oca con Txistorra de Tatiles a multitude of times, and its elegance was only matched by the strange expressions with which clients greeted its reception. When it was offered, as on this night, it was always popular, if only because of the very idea of paying that kind of money for poached eggs. Nobody, upon reception of the work, had ever questioned its value, and nobody had ever sent even a sliver of it back, for fear that they may have missed out on some magical power that the recipe contained, or that they would be in such an act of blaspheme, tarred, feathered, and forced to lay their own head through their own anus. The dishwasher could always tell the plate on which it had been served, because this was a plate that never really required much more than a cursory rinse, as though there existed a secret pact with clients to lick it clean before abandoning it to John’s Hobart.
“Nicky, goodnight,” said John turning to the unshaven, squat, dark-complexioned chef. Nicky had been in the Yolk since breakfast and had securely placed the sauces and au jus in their compartments, ready for the evening.
“Thanks, John. All the sauce is prepared, and the wife can’t wait for it!”
Nate looked over to him with a look of genuine hope and entreated: “May they bathe the little Nick-egg and lather him to this world!”
It was an odd wish, but not any different from what they all felt, as they considered the forthcoming egg dishes of the evening and the hopefully potent sauce that Nicky might have for his wife tonight.
“MMM!” exhorted Nicky. “Keep talking like that and the sauce will be in my pants!”
John looked over at Boris, who stood rather sulkily behind the gathering, his huge mass of sweaty flesh and greasy hair, covered by the great, white chef’s apron, topped off with the overly large chef’s hat, gave the impression of a weird, filthy snowman, slowly dripping in late April balminess. He was the very anathema of Fabergé Restaurant: Fabergé Restaurant, the establishment that featured the Flor de Huevo y Tartufo en Grasa de Oca con Txistorra de Tatiles and glimmering facsimiles of each of the eggs located inside the Kremlin all within a single dining room: the newly placed Trans-Siberian Railway, the Memory of Azov, the Bouquet of Lilies Clock, the Clover Leaf, the Moscow Kremlin, the Alexander Palace, the Standard Yacht, the Alexander III Equestrian, the Romanov Tercentenary, and, most resembling John-the-Owner himself, the venerable (but distinctly unattractive) Steel Military. Fabergé Restaurant, where eggy delicacies from as far away as Spain, and even China, come to roost, before being served up to guests, for the most part wealthy, white men who, if they had fantasized about delicate Chinese delicacies, had done so when thinking about mail-order brides or sex tourism.
No matter. John nonetheless insisted upon a variety of exotic creations, and was partial to what he called Oriental simplicity, by which he meant elegant but exotic recipes. For these, he favored Chinese recipes, like xian dan, the salted eggs of hens and ducks flavored with Sichuan pepper, star anise, and grain spirits; or the surprisingly popular cha dan, the chicken eggs simmered in a spiced broth stained dark brown by tea; or the lu ji dan, quail eggs that are flavored with cassia bark, star anise, Sichuan pepper, dried ginger, male and female cloves, and Chinese cardamom; or the decidedly unpopular dan xian, the strings of half-formed eggs that are found inside of freshly slaughtered hens, whose very description seems to ward off the squeamish.
Nevertheless, amidst the jewel-like beauty of Tina, the eternal perfection of Jessica, the brilliant intricacy of Nate, the strong quirkiness of Johnny, and the all-knowing and overpoweringly rugged John-the-Owner, Boris held an important place in Fabergé Restaurant. Amidst the exotic, most clients opted for the recognizable, and in that regard, the lobster topped the list. It was a great choice for a money-losing operation that was built on intricacy and obsession, because lobsters bore their complexity in their makeup, and thus required little manual manipulation. Boris steamed most of the lobster creations, and, for the rest, cut them in half while they were still alive and upside down, seemingly begging for freedom, by stabbing their heads with the tip of the chef knife and slamming the rest of the blade downwards, towards the tail. He then ripped it open, pounded out areas for the stuffing of lobster eggs, salmon roe, egg yolks, butter, and au jus-induced fresh bread crumbs that absorbed the flavors, and produced a soft cake-like stuffing, which when coated with herbs looked palatable for the fainthearted, while nevertheless remaining consistent in the restaurant’s themes.
And so John could smile at Boris, looking at him through Doris’s pragmatic eyes, with a gaze of a till filled with credit card receipts and large bills, especially hundreds, the favorite currency of the Wall Street set.
No amount of cash, real or not, could save Fabergé Restaurant on that night. Whether John knew it or not, it was impossible to tell. For myself, I had waited for this night ever since my creation, and, as I watched the little band disperse within my yolk, admiring each of them as the range of oddities they represented, I felt impending nostalgia. Freedom and nostalgia might be the same sentiment, viewed from opposing perspectives. Nostalgia of freedom, if freedom was ever a part of our memories, is the other side of nostalgia for freedom, like the freedom that has never been experienced, but is nonetheless our collective objective. The enemies of nostalgia and freedom are the everyday, and so nobody knows how to live in freedom, because the very possibility of freedom in the presence defies its nature as being either an objective, or a once-lived experience that’s unlikely to ever be recovered and is necessarily absent in the presence. I knew, as I felt the warmth of the illuminated grills and
stoves and ranges, and felt the impending clefts and fissures in the very walls of Fabergé Restaurant, that the miraculous shell that was so impermeable and strong bore within its very existence the imprint of fragility, and that the time would come when its mottled surfaces that now contribute to its smooth perfection would soon be shattered fragments, unworthy remnants of the perfect whole that keeps us captive, that limits the world to this small space, now filling with the teeming yolks of its own destruction.
Chapter 23
Tina was right. Something HAD changed in the demeanor of Jude that Saturday evening as he walked, rather than his usual skulking, to a seat at Fabergé Restaurant. He held his head high, and, despite having tripped over it on the way in, he now brazenly wielded his skateboard like a shield, or a sword, proud in its possession, and even as he wore a bulging backpack, he seemed to stand up straighter, emanating Achilles-like strength as he approached the battlefield at Troy, armed and prepared for his return to battle after a prolonged period of withdrawal.
He seated himself, so much more conspicuously than usual in one of the luxurious tables for two that lay in the center of the dining room, near the bar. He looked around as he laid his skateboard up against one of the chairs, and then removed his jean jacket and placed it lovingly around the other chair before seating himself. He then reached down into the backpack that he had laid down upon the floor and removed a small stack of books, bearing titles such as Easter and its Customs, Eggs in Cookery, and The Art of Carl Fabergé, and removed from his backpack a small, yellow folder containing a pile of stapled articles with such titles as “The Egg Reopened,” “Decorated Eggs,” “The Egg of the Pala Montefeltro,” and a host of single pages with passages underlined in yellow marker and photographs, apparently torn from different sources.
He laid the texts out before him and cracked open the covers of each book, one by one, in honor of his current eggsistence, and in a solemn ceremony to honor his place at the table. In the days since his last visit to Fabergé Restaurant, he had been occupied with an unexpected, and unexpectedly lucrative, moving job. An administrator from the Creationist Institute, the place that had commissioned his current eggy writing project, had contacted him regarding progress on his manuscript. She also informed him, in the course of a phone conversation the morning after his odd encounter in the Fabergé Restaurant bar, just as he was about to head to the bank to beg, cajole, and otherwise dispute the fees imposed by his stupid bank, that he would need to submit the final draft of his work to a new location, because the institute was moving to larger quarters.
As she waited for Jude to jot down the new address, the Creationist administrator, who was familiar with his earlier work and the dossier in which it was stored, made a comment about his expertise in moving.
“Ah, yes,” replied Jude, fumbling in his jacket for a pen. “My moveable feast!” His hand was stuck in the torn lining of his jacket, and he almost said “my moveable fist,” which, he thought later, could have inspired all kinds of strange thoughts for this Creationist person.
In the prolonged pause, the administrator then said that the institute was in fact in need of some help with their own move, since the company they had engaged had fallen woefully short in delivering the vehicles and manpower required.
“I’d be happy to combine my expertise-s, plural, and help out!” Jude had blurted out, in jest and desperation.
The receptionist, intrigued by the youthful enthusiasm of Jude’s voice, which she’d later admitted to have found enticing (being part of the Creationist Institute didn’t necessarily forbear such seductive possibilities, apparently), followed up after the phone call the harried Creationist director, who loved the idea of further supporting one of “their own.” Shortly thereafter, he hired Jude to help out for three days, with an advance of $500 and final payment, also in cash, of another $1,000. Jude could hardly believe his luck. And then, when he went to the bank to cover the impending overage in fees with his new found fortune, he hit on, in a manner of speaking, a young teller who was most willing to help in exchange, apparently, for a few moments of discussion, first about the tattered skateboard and eventually, when she asked, about his writing.
In this era of generalized despair, in which traditional family or tribe or village life has been torn asunder in favor of near-universal wandering, the bank teller or the post-office worker or the pharmacy cashier or, for the wealthier, the doctor or the psychiatrist or the lawyer, become front-line conversationalists who seem to exist, mostly, to save people from the horrors of daily existence. Wendy, the bank teller, demonstrated to Jude, as she did all day long to the clients of this bank, that this dialogue can run two ways, and that fantasies, dreams, hopes, and, well, something as simple as a flirty conversation with an attractive person, are to be sought after in whatever quarters exist, including the easily accessible clients. Jude, with his wanderlust comportment, and the means of such wandering tucked between his elbow and his torso, was a good victim. He offered moments of escape from the cage and walls of her employer, and she, in exchange, pressed upon that strangely un-capitalistic “override” button on the screen, causing the bank fees—all of them!—to suddenly retreat into cyber death and cremation.
Jude fell headlong in love with her, in the way that people do in such settings, but only for a moment or two, and, along the way, he felt a sudden fuzziness towards this branch, this bank, and the entire abusive system of which it was but a tiny part. Such gracious admiration and gratitude would probably last for a few days, or until the next abusive act committed by a bank that in its true soul was devoted to its abusive fees for its obscene profits. As a parting act, in the glow of love and lust, Jude wrote his phone number on the back of a deposit slip and slid it towards her with a smile of gratitude. She was plain, but attractive in a bank-teller way, someone he’d most certainly not recognize were he to ever see her again outside of this precise setting, but someone who, at that very moment, with her special fee-eradicating touch, was oddly gorgeous to him.
And so, back in his familiar Fabergé Restaurant surroundings, Jude could now spread the tools of his trade before him, confidently, with the gentle bulge of his groin pumping blood into his cock, and the equally welcome bulge of ten-and twenty-dollar bills that could be converted into hours at Fabergé Restaurant, and, in turn, converted into words upon the yawning, white space that awaited his heaving spurts of ink.
He had decided, in light of his unexpected windfall, to convert one of his precious ten-dollar bills into quarters, which he then spent making copies and scans in the New York Public Library of books and articles devoted to the symbols and significance of eggs through history and across cultural genres. This was the boost that he decided he needed, a way of connecting his own words to the many thousands of years of written, egg-filled records. And now that he felt aroused, and infused with cash, he could look around this precious egg, in search of images of lust and love so as to nourish his memory, so that later that evening he could gush out his passionate relief.
Fabergé Restaurant seemed particularly active tonight, as an array of servers bustled in and out of the swinging door towards the kitchen, and it seemed to Jude that there were more tables, or perhaps more tables set with more table settings, than he had ever seen before. He had already decided that he’d stay to the bitter end tonight, since he could afford not only an appetizer, and even a main course, but a nightcap! He had already planned, in fact, to finish off this night in the bar, in light of the conversational windfall he had gained with this previous encounter there with that guy Ted. Most importantly, though, was his decision to make serious advances on his egg manuscript, so that he could finally move on to his novel, the Great American Novel, that he wanted to actually start writing. “Come hell or high water,” he thought, “the first words will be on the page tomorrow!”
To stir his eggy thoughts, Jude looked down at the array of articles and books before him, seeking inspiration. He scanned some of the pages and encountered k
eywords that he jotted down with his big, black Montblanc pen, beginning with a Latin proverb that adorned an article on the mythology of the egg: omne vivum ex ovo, followed by its translation: “All life comes from the egg.”
“Nice,” he thought.
He then began to write out on one page a list, at first cleanly, and then, as the words were born beneath his wet, black nib, increasingly messily: nourishment; birth; resurrection; strong without, fragile within; hatch, sustenance, continuity, punishment.
“Punishment!” Jude blurted out. “I had not thought of that!” He imagined throwing eggs around Fabergé Restaurant in some kind of open rebellion. Of what? Now that he had money in his pocket, and the thought of a night’s minor feasting, and, hopefully, major writing, he could think of nothing against which to rebel. Maybe tomorrow.
On a second page, he jotted down notes, sufficient to provide him with necessary detail, but sketchy enough to avoid his having to make citations: Birth of Aphrodite, born of an egg, hatched by doves alongside the Euphrates River. “Hatched by doves? Strange.”
Leda, the swan recalled by Yeats in his description of her rape by Zeus, who laid two double-yolked eggs. Her husband, Tyndareus, had fertilized the first pair, from which came Castor and Clytemnestra; and Zeus had fertilized the second pair, leading to the birth of Helen and Pollux. The story went on, with ever-more complexity.
Hatched Page 21