PA Eating: Dino-Chow Breakfast

My dad owned a restaurant when I was a kid, and cooking is in my family's DNA. It's been especially exciting for me lately because my parents have adopted dino-chow habits to varying degrees – which means that now, we enjoy our family bond over healthy, delicious food.

We like to play the "You Know How You Could Do That? Game"... in which we eat something, ponder it for a few moments, then one-up each other with ideas about how it could be done differently or better. This is very helpful when trying to adapt favorite meals or recipes to the new dino-chow lifestyle.

When I was home over the Memorial Day weekend, we cooked some mighty feasts, starting with breakfast on Friday morning.

First, my dad made delicious coffee (served in pretty little cups my mom bought in Venice).

Our meal was strawberries, pork sausage, sautéed cabbage, and mollet eggs, which are what hard-boiled eggs aspire to be; more on the mollet eggs later. Here's my dad cooking the sausage and cabbage.

And this is the final spread. No toast. No potatoes. No one felt deprived.

And this is my personal plate. Yummy!

So... what the devil is a mollet egg? It's similar to hard-boiled except the white is firm instead of rubbery, the yolk is smooth and silky instead of dry, and it's served warm. Mom ate some in Italy and fell in love, so last weekend, through trial and error, we learned the best way to make them.

Mollet Eggs
1. Bring eggs to room temperature. (Again, with the room temperature. Clearly, eggs do not like to be cold before they go into our bellies.)

2. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil, then reduce to a simmer.

3. Gently lower the eggs into the simmering water and cook for 6-8 minutes, depending on how much movement you want in your yolks. I like ZERO movement, so went for the longer time.

4. Drain, peel (carefully!), and eat.


These keep in the fridge just like hard-boiled and are delicious warm, cold, on salads, and mixed with homemade mayo.