How to produce your own eggs: Spring eggs

Recipe suitable for vegans and vegetarians.

“Spring eggs” Ingredients for 4 persons when served as a starter:

For the eggs:

250 g Broccoli Juice (preferably you have a juicer and juice a small Broccoli and mix with water, alternatively you can puree a piece of Broccoli and mix with water)

1 TS of Agar

Seasoning:

- Piece of Ginger
- Salt
- Pepper
- Herbs according to season and taste

For the sauce:

- 175 g carrots
- 3 TS olive or sunflower oil
- ½ TS turmeric
- ½ TS coriander seeds
- ½ TS honey
- 200 ml vegetable fond or white wine
- a little bit of chilly
- 1 TS lemon juice

Preparation of the eggs:

- Juice broccoli, add some water till you receive a bright green juice
- Season to taste with salt, pepper and grated ginger
- Dissolve agar into the Broccoli juice mix and bring to boil. Remove from stove.
- Add some herbs to juice.
- Then put mixture into silicon mould that has the from of an egg or use cleaned egg shells. You will need approx. 4 egg shells.
- But broccoli juice mix into the mould.
- Leave to cool for at least 2 hours, so that it can firm.

In the meantime prepare the carrot sauce:

- Chop the carrots
- Roast the spices (turmeric, coriander seeds) in a pan together with the oil.
- Add the chopped carrots and honey, steam everything for approx. 8 min
- Add the fond or white wine and simmer for 30 min till liquid is reduced by half.
- Puree the mixture
- Season to taste with chilly, lemon juice and salt.

After two hours take the aspic out of the mould. Garnish with herbs and carrot sauce and serve on a plate:

What the Food Producers Say

I finally received some replies from the food producers with regard to my enquiry about the eggs used in their products. As expected, when there is no information indicating free-range or organic eggs being used, either on the packing itself or on the website, the eggs come from battery hens.

Dolmio (which is a brand of the Mars food company) assured me that “Mars has always been committed to the well-being of all animals”* but “Mars' overriding concern is to manufacture and sell products that meet the highest standards of quality and safety and to satisfy our consumers' needs”.
I don’t know what they are trying to imply with this statement: That free range eggs are not save to eat? There are plenty of food producers who are using free range eggs in there products already, among them Mars competitor Unilever Europe, another giant food producer (brands include Hellman’s mayonnaise). They seem to have no problems producing foods that meet the highest standards of quality using free range eggs. For a full list of food manufactures using free range eggs in their products, see the Website The Good Egg Award.

Mars continues that they are “currently evaluating the situation on the source of eggs used in the manufacturing of our Food products and during 2009 we will commence using barn eggs. This change will take place some years before the legislative date given of 2012.”

A bit of background information with regard to this statement:

- Below a very good link that explains the difference between caged eggs, barn eggs, free range eggs and organic eggs, in case you start getting confuse:
Know Your Eggs?

- Secondly, the EU has passed a legislation that in 2012, the battery keeping of hens as documented in an earlier blog entry is to be banned and will be replaced by so called “enriched” cages, which give the hens slightly more space, a nest and a perch to sit on in the cage. (http://www.ciwf.ie/campaigns/campaign_egglaying.html )

But even this smallest improvement for the caged hens is under threat as the egg industry is lobbying the politicians to further postpone the date. There is also the possibility that the food producers just get their eggs from caged hens outside the EU. Therefore, there is no way around a clear labelling with regard to the source of the eggs used on the packaging. Here my suggestion for Dolmio Express Pasta:





* Mars also owes the brands of Whiskas and Pedigree. Despite the marketing I can assure you that cats and dogs would not buy this pet food. It is of a very low quality and also contains colorants and lots of flavour enhancer, because otherwise the animals wouldn’t touch this mixture of wastage. Rather spend a little more on quality pet food and save money in the long run, because your pets are healthier and happier.

How to produce your own eggs: Egg “Mexicana”

The ideas for the recipes are based on a cookbook by Ferran Adria, the chef of the restaurant “El Bulli” that also participated in the Documenta 12 in 2007.

Recipe suitable for vegans and vegetarians.

Egg “Mexicana” Ingredients for 4 persons when served as a starter:

125 g Tomato Juice
125 g Vegetable Stock
1 TS of Agar Approx.
24 Kidney beans (from can or dried beans soaked in water for several hours and then boiled in unsalted water till soft)

Seasoning:
- Chilly
- Salt
- Pepper
- Paprika
- Garlic (optional)
- Smoked Jalapenos (optional)

Preparation:
- Mix tomato Juice and vegetable stock
- Season to taste with salt, pepper, chilly, paprika, garlic and
- Dissolve agar into the tomato juice mix and bring to boil. Remove from stove.
- Put kidney beans into silicon mould that has the from of an egg or use cleaned egg shells. You will need approx. 4 egg shells. Use approx. 6 beans per egg.
- Then put tomato juice mix into the mould.
- Leave to cool for at least 2 hours, so that it can firm.
- After two hours take the aspic out of the mould and serve on a plate:

Who’s to blame – The Egg Intervention

Even if we all would change our buying habits and only buy free-range or organic eggs, this would hardly change anything with regard to how many hens are kept in laying batteries. Most of the eggs form the batteries are used in the food industry for noodles, cakes, mayonnaise, a whole range of convenience foods. This is the main business of the egg industry and they sell far more eggs to any of the big food producers per day then to all end consumer in a whole year.
The next time I went shopping, I checked which of the products contained eggs and I tried to find out if those eggs came from free range or battery eggs:

Unfortunately, I was not very lucky: None of the products that contained eggs had any information on the packaging with regard to the source of the eggs.

Back home, I went to the websites of the food producers, hoping to find more information with regard to what type of eggs are used in the products. I found the desired information once, on the Irish Ben&Jerry´s ice cream website:

They use free range eggs in their ice cream. All other food producers make no statements about the eggs used.

As next step to find the information, I wrote to the food producers:

So far I have received no replies, but I keep you posted.

For the time being, I will not buy any of the products where it is unclear which typ of eggs are used.