Egg Nests

"It all started with a book. A whimsically illustrated French children’s book about cooking, called La cuisine est un jeu d’enfants, or “Cooking is Child’s Play”. First published in French in 1963, a version that included both the original French and the English translation was published by Random House in 1965. I first stumbled upon this book a few years ago and have been buying up used copies wherever I can find them, as gifts for my young friends who like to cook. The recipes are mostly pretty standard classical French recipes, like quiche Lorraine and croque monsieur. What’s funny is to see recipes like coq au vin and stuffed veal in a recipe book clearly intended for children. I grew up on Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls: Facsimile Edition, and I can assure you that there was nothing in that book as complicated as what was expected of the children reading “La Cuisine” 50 years ago. That said, in this book there is a fairly simple and intriguing recipe for “egg nest” or “nid d’oeuf”. Unlike most egg nest recipes with which you may be familiar, the ones with the egg filling the hole in a slice of bread, this recipe doesn’t use bread, but has you separate the egg, whip up the egg white, form a nest with the whipped egg white, and bake it with the yolk in the middle. Oh yes, and some grated Gruyere cheese is folded into the whipped egg whites. More cheesy structure for the nest. 3 ingredients—egg, salt, and Gruyere. The hardest part is whipping the egg white. And the result? We loved it. Now we only tried it with Gruyere, but I suspect that it would be just as good with freshly grated Parmesan...."