There is something irresistibly gross about Lucky Peach food photography. The bizarre lightening and color correction, the styling that fluctuates between offbeat and grotesque. It’s so weird, it’s amazing. Aside from it’s unique visual appeal, Lucky Peach is consistently packed with culinary expertise and damn good journalism. Though the magazine will soon be gone, the brand’s fourth (and presumably final) book, All About Eggs, embodies everything that was great about the publication compiled in a kelly green hard cover.

All About Eggs really is all about eggs. It examines the egg from every angle. There are essays on the evolution of the egg tart in Asia, an egg-fueled murder in a San Francisco diner, and the egg throughout time. There are guides on deciphering egg carton labels, egg varieties, and egg substitutes. The bright yellow yolk at the center of the book houses strangely photographed finished recipes ranging from deep fried Filipino Kwek Kwek to classic, crisp French Meringues. The egg white pages on either side of the recipe section are generously peppered with egg photo illustration—egg art objects, repurposed egg shells and cartons, egg ephemera, and many, many altered photos of eggs (anthropomorphized, animalized, and otherwise reimagined). If you are at all interested in eggs, you need this book!

All About Eggs: Everything We Know About the World's Most Important Food by Rachel Khong, the editors of Lucky Peach Clarkson Potter 2017, 256 pages, 6.8 x 1 x 8.8 inches, Hardcover $16 Buy on Amazon

See sample pages from this book at Wink. Read the rest

These three different egg-breaking and separating machines have slightly different tasks, but they are all equally hypnotic. Read the rest

No kitchen is complete without a snot nosed egg separator. It's $14 on Amazon. Read the rest

To visualize the beating heart and vasculature of a chick embryo (72 hours old), ink is injected into its yolk sac artery with a finely drawn glass capillary needle. A window is cut into an egg to expose the embryo and then placed under a stereo microscope (Zeiss Stemi 2000-C; 10x magnification). Video by By Anna Franz, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford and MBL, Woods Hole.

The Ovo-Tech Rz-1 breaks eggs like nobody's business.

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Did you know you can enjoy raw eggs relatively fearlessly in the UK? As an American often found hiding out in England, I was surprised to learn that they don't have egg nog here. Read the rest

"Lower your eggs straight from the fridge into already-boiling water, or place them in a steamer insert in a covered pot steaming at full blast on the stovetop." Read the rest

The answer: Because of a harmless-to-humans viral infection.

The bluish egg above was laid by an araucana, a breed of chicken native to Chile and one of two breeds well known for occasionally popping out a blue egg. Turns out, it's the result of the chicken being infected with a retrovirus — a virus that can insert its own genetic information into the host's DNA. In this case, the virus just happens to turn eggs blue.

This happened in my friend's henhouse this morning.

My friend Kate Hastings, who took this photo, thinks this egg froze because the hen cracked it slightly. But it also looks like the kind of expansion cracking that you can get when eggs freeze and burst their own shells. When the water in the egg white and yolk freezes, it forms a crystalline structure — and that structure isn't very tightly packed. There's lots of space between the molecules, which means that solid ice takes up more space than the liquid it replaced. If the egg freezes solid enough, it's got nowhere left to expand except outside the shell.

Eggshells, as it turns out, are not a great insulator from the cold. Chicken butts are, but chickens also don't always sit on their eggs consistently enough to keep those eggs from freezing.

One side note: You can actually thaw and eat frozen eggs. But you shouldn't thaw and eat an egg like this. That's because the shell is actually a pretty good barrier against bacteria. If a fresh egg — the kind sitting under a hen — has cracked, there's a higher likelihood of bacterial infiltration.

At the Criminal Crafts blog, a fun tutorial on "pairing zombies with a fuzzy pastel holiday," through delicious zombie bunny rabbits and haunted eggs. There's a photo gallery here.

(via Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Read the rest

The Apron Strings cooking blog continues its run of excellent ideas for making molded eggs by frying them inside vegetable cross-sections with this lovely recipe for onion-ring eggs: just half-cook rings of sliced onion, turn over, and crack in an egg. Add some water to the pan and cook covered over low heat. Be sure to click through for links to other variations, including some perfectly lovely flower-power eggs cooked in sectioned, floral-looking sweet peppers.

Onion Ring Sunny-side Up Eggs – Sauteed Onion as a Ring Mold for Eggs (via Neatorama) Read the rest