What to do with Quail Eggs

This is soon to become a burning issue for our CSA members, as they are getting quail eggs in their basket this week. The eggs, as you can see from the picture, are about 1/5th the size of a regular chicken egg. They can be used in any way you use a regular chicken egg, but smaller. They are fun simply hard boiled and peeled (and possibly halved) in a salad – I’ve seen them soft boiled on fancy chef salads as well.

[To hard boil: Bring a pan of water to a light boil. Drop the eggs in for four minutes, then drain and transfer immediately to an ice water bath for at least five minutes. Peel when cold. The shell is surprisingly hard, so be ready for that.]

You can also use them in creative mini egg dishes like those pictured here in photos by CSA member and extraordinary chef, Phil Karsting.

One of my favorite quail egg recipes involves the use of the sort of greens we have around in early summer (also CSA staples): Spinach, Swiss chard (baby or not), beet, and turnip greens. This is modified from an egg and Swiss chard recipe from Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (linked above) – this book chronicles novelist Kingsolver’s family’s experiment with eating almost exclusively local for a year (they cheated on coffee, as would I). Since Kingsolver is from southern Virginia, many of the recipes and ideas in the book are perfect for our CSA members as well as anyone in the Mid-Atlantic area trying to eat seasonally and locally.

Quail Eggs in a Green Nest:

• Makes a side dish sized portion
• Count on one quail egg and one heaping handful of greens per person. Use any seasonal greens like Spinach, mizuna mustard, beet or turnip greens, and Swiss chard. In the fall you can substitute kale and collard greens with the same results.
• If you are using Swiss Chard, remove the leafy part from the stem. Do the same if you beet or turnip greens are large enough to have a thick central stem. Throw away the beet and turnip stems, but keep the chard ones. Wash the greens but don’t dry them (the same as in the Jaleo spinach recipe). Place them in a covered large pot over medium heat and let them cook down, stirring occasionally to get them to cook evenly). When fully wilted and cooked, drain and chop.
• While the greens are cooking down, add a tablespoon of olive oil (notice how all recipes call for “good quality olive oil” – well, I am sure this would be better with that, but I used crappy sale brand, and it worked just fine) per serving. Heat over a medium flame then, if you want, add some chopped garlic and/or finely chopped onion. For those of you in the CSA, you may want to chop your shallot flower and use it here. Sauté until the onions are translucent and the garlic smells good but is not crispy.
• If you saved chard stems, chop them now and add to the onions and garlic for about the last 5 minutes of their cooking.
• Add your pre-cooked and drained greens, season to taste, and continue sautéing for just a few minutes until the greens are warmed through and infused with the garlic and onions.
• Divide the green in the skillet into little piles (like nests), one for each serving. Turn the heat up a bit, make a hole in the nest and crack a quail egg in it. Let the egg fry for as long as it takes to get it the way you like fried eggs (we like the yolk runny so it mixes with the greens). Serve each little nest as side to quail, chicken, or any other fine Green Fence Farm meat product.
• [To make a full vegetarian meal out of this recipe, add cooked brown rice at the same time you add the chard stems. Divide into nests, but bigger nests than above. Use a chicken egg or several quail eggs as the center].