Chard Pancakes with Soft-Boiled Egg

In addition to it being Friday someone somewhere has also declared today “Food Revolution Day”. I thought calling it “Friday” was good enough really as Friday’s have always a cause for celebration in their own right. They don’t need the extra help but this particular Friday supposedly is a day when the world will come together to sing Kumbaya while those of us who cook can teach those who don’t about preparing and eating good food.

Food Revolution Day’s official website goes on to explain that the day is “a chance for people to come together within their homes, schools, workplaces and communities to cook and share their kitchen skills, food knowledge and resources.” When I first heard about it through the Dorista tom-tom I thought “damn, does Jamie Oliver know about this?” Well it turns out he did. He’s the guy in charge. So we can blame him for messing with Fridays.

To commemorate this annual food awareness holiday (which this year must share the day with National Cherry Cobbler Day) my fellow Doristas and I are celebrating by doing exactly what we were going to do anyway: prepare good food and then tell you about how we made it.
I’m sure the Dorista turnout for Food Revolution Day will be high seeing as there is no better way to to get 100% compliance than to not require anything special of the celebrants.

Every other Friday we take the time to carefully consider our menu, ask questions of each other, and then cook our selections in unison. For Food Revolution Day we are just going to cook whatever the hell we want. This suggests that the Doristas prefer to take Food Revolution Day to its extreme and treat it more like Food Anarchy Day.

I chose to celebrate Food Anarchy, um, Food Revolution Day by cooking up a batch of the Chard Pancakes I had missed from a few weeks ago. I’m a big fan of chard and I’m a big fan of pancakes so I was fairly certain this combination would set off the fireworks to celebrate a revolution. Around a real French table these would be called farçous – pancakes loaded with greens and they are typically served as either an appetizer or main course.

My verdict? Meh.

I found their taste to not be very revolutionary at all. Kind of plain. Even with lots of good butter and salt I just couldn’t get too excited. Chard pancakes weren’t going to be fomenting revolutions in my kitchen. Dear Husband certainly didn’t rush to pickup arms and start fighting. Nope, the established Dinner Specials would maintain their positions of dinner-power.

Dorie’s recipe made quite a few pancakes and just because The Chard Pancake Revolution failed to materialize I wasn’t going to waste them. I was tempted to give them a toss but I’ve had enough meals at my sister’s house to know that food doesn’t always have to taste good. Wasting them wouldn’t be sending a good message to our revolutionaries would it?

So instead I got creative and the next morning I put a soft-boiled egg on a few of them, served ’em with a big glass of champagne and called the whole mess “brunch”. Then it hit me: when you put a soft boiled egg on something, anything, you are committing something of a revolutionary act. A Food Revolutionary act but still a revolutionary act nonetheless. They were quite good this way. They were chic even.

Or maybe it was just  the champagne but I never underestimate the revolutionary power of a runny, soft-boiled egg. Putting an egg on food changes it suddenly and quite often radically. Isn’t that what a revolution is?

Dump a runny egg on something, anything, and whatever you had been conditioned to think about it previously must now be thought of in a completely different manner forever more. Appetizers and dinner become breakfasts or brunches.  Sides become whole meals.

Chard Pancakes with Soft-Boiled Egg

Eaten for breakfast with toast soldiers, scooped out onto a few stalks of roasted asparagus, topping hamburger, or dumped onto a salad (or peeled and squashed onto some chard pancakes) a runny egg is magic. It transforms the ordinary into something else entirely.
You can get this magic with a poached egg or a fried egg as well but I rarely use those methods because making soft boiled eggs is so much easier and this steaming method first taught to me by my Nana makes a perfect egg every time.

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Chard Pancakes with Soft-Boiled Egg

Soft-Boiled Eggs Serves as many as you want. Method legitimized by Cook's Illustrated

This is what you will need:

• Check here for Ingredients for Chard Pancakes
• Eggs

This is how you make it:

For Chard Pancakes:
1. Adapted from Dorie Greenspan's "Around My French Table"
2. Recipe can be found here.
For Soft-Boiled Eggs:
3. Fill a saucepan large enough to hold your eggs with 1/2 inch of water. No more!
4. Bring the water to a boil. With only 1/2 inch of water this should take no time at all.
5. Place your eggs in the pot, lower the temperature to medium, and cover.
6. Set your timer for 6 minutes
7. When timer goes off, quickly remove the cover and put the pot under running cold water. Let cold water run into the pot for 30 seconds until cool to the touch. If your water doesn't run cold you can do what I do and toss a few ice cubes in the pot to help out
8. After 30 seconds remove the eggs. They are actually still warm and tasty inside.
9. Feel free to adjust the 6 minute time to your preferred level of done-ness. For me 6 minutes produces an egg where the white is cooked solid and the yolk remains runny.
10. You might have to make a slight adjustment depending on the size of your eggs or whether your refrigerator is colder or not but once you get your number you won't have to change it whether you are cooking two eggs or eight.

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All content copyright 2014 by Trevor Kensey and SisBoomBlog.com.

This dish was an assignments for French Friday’s with Dorie, a cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s culinary tome “Around My French Table”. We generally avoid including the recipes in our posts. However, wherever there has been a significant adaptation by me or where the recipe has already been publicly posted by Ms. Greenspan or her publishers or hundreds of other bloggers I will either include it here (only when adapted) or provide a direct link. Please feel free to contact me via the link provided on my page if you need any assistance finding a French Friday with Dorie Recipe.