Federal nutrition rules set to go into effect July 1 would force enticing items like cheesy pizza off the à la carte line at Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights, Ill.—a change that school officials fear might motivate many students to leave campus during open lunch periods to seek unhealthy options at nearby fast-food restaurants.
Rather than comply with the new rules for snacks and other foods, which apply to participants in the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs, the 12,250-student district’s school board voted to leave the federally subsidized meals programs altogether.
The federal government and school districts too are grappling with snack life.
It’s tough for me to dream up dishes with a blank slate. But give me a few swipes through Instagram or the passing suggestion of a few flavors and I can fall into a dish really quickly.
That’s what happened here after I was paging through Janice Cole’s “The Chicken and the Egg.” She’s got a recipe for baked eggs with goat cheese and mint pesto. It’s a lovely looking dish that she puts in a salad plate-sized shallow ramekin (its technical name, anyone?). Toasted bread topped with goat cheese and a bit of pesto with a raw egg settled atop it all, then baked.
That bit of inspiration was good enough for me. I’d just packed an old kimchi jar full of pesto I made to salvage some basil before it went bad. I didn’t use a recipe and apparently was in the throes of a garlic frenzy while I was whirring it up so the pesto, which thanks to our crazy old fridge is so strong it’s now frozen into a sliceable paste, is like a punch to the mouth. (I love it.) I had plain yogurt. And where she called for hazelnuts to sprinkle over the top of it I had raw walnuts. The other big difference is that my ramekins were much smaller in width and much deeper. They’re probably about three inches tall, so I the dish became a savory bread pudding of sorts. Non-stick spray inside the ramekin, toasted slices of sourdough, a dollop each of yogurt and pesto, then another layer of everything all over again before I topped it with the two eggs, gave it some salt and pepper and threw the chopped walnuts over it. 350 in the oven for about 20 minutes.
That centered yolk was perfectly done, but the top right one? As firm as an Easter egg’s. I need to do more troubleshooting, but I’m not sure, given the dimensions of the ramekin, if it’s even possible to get around the unevenness. Still, I loved it. It was a crazy hearty meal. And certainly adorable, which as everyone knows is half the battle.
There’s so much to love in the piece. The story was not just about the regional diversity and sheer enormity of the food scene, and the segment producer Erica Mu wasn’t talking to (with all due respect to Jonathan Gold, who Mu namechecks) outsider reviewers who are anointing this or that restaurant the best place for this or that “authentic” Chinese dish. The story is focused on Chinese people who are themselves exploring notions of authenticity and who see Chinese cuisine as a tether to home, as a reflection of themselves, as an expression of their cultural identity.
There are great scenes in it, and fun quotes too. My favorite: “Yelp is not credible regarding Chinese food,” says a Chinese food blogger who blogs exclusively in Chinese.
