Oh you again, duck fat

Egg season is here once more.

The Tournament of Cookbooks, a.k.a. the Piglet, is over and a little sparkle has departed from my mornings. One judge was flagrantly lame, but I thought the rest did a pretty decent job even when I didn't agree with their decisions, as I often didn't. People interact with cookbooks very personally and I'm as interested in these idiosyncratic passions and aversions as I am in rigorous criticism and mad recipe testing.

By now the whole world knows that April Bloomfield's Girl and Her Pig trounced Smitten Kitchen in the final round. I didn't even own a copy of Girl and Her Pig and immediately rushed to Barnes and Noble to correct this oversight.

What do I think? Here are some of the ingredients you need to cook from Girl and Her Pig: smoked haddock, veal kidneys, guinea hen, duck fat, octopus, pork cheeks, whole suckling pig, pig's ears, pig's trotters, sweetbreads, ramps, suet, Old Tom gin, Sardinian gray mullet bottarga, young carrots "about the size of your pointer finger," spring garlic stalks, and "beef tongue that has been trimmed of any firm or hard bits."

My personal favorite: "a brain-in, tongue-in lamb's head (3-4 pounds), skinned and split lengthwise by your butcher."

Clearly April Bloomfield hasn't met my butcher.

This list irks me in a way that having to buy fish sauce to cook Vietnamese or sumac to cook Middle Eastern doesn't. It almost seems designed to make ordinary home cooks feel dorky. Like all the cool kids know about this awesome duck fat hook-up, but no one bothered to tell me about it. Outside Provence, what home cook has so much duck fat hanging around that she can casually roast potatoes in it?

No further commentary until I've spent more time with the book.

Meanwhile, I'm still ambling along with Smitten Kitchen, liking it more and more. Maybe her loss in the Tournament made me feel protective? I'm trying to make one dish every night. Just one dish. I've been in a funk and cutting back on the cooking has helped a bit.

Here's what we ate this week, all recipes from Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen Cookbook:

-ranchero eggs with blistered cheese. You make a simple, mildly spicy tomato sauce, poach eggs in the sauce, blanket in shredded jack, bake until the cheese is "blistered." Top with tortilla strips and sour cream. A solid breakfast-for-dinner dish that required no grocery shopping. I would take the eggs out of the oven even sooner than she indicates. Recipe here.

-avocado and cucumber tartine Pretty open-faced sandwich. Entails splitting and toasting baguette then topping with avocado. Make a little salsa of minced cucumber, toasted sesame oil, and rice vinegar and spread over the avocado. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds. Delicious.

-honey and harissa farro salad You cook farro for 20 minutes, toss with roasted parsnips and carrots, lemony vinaigrette, feta cheese. Superb. You should make this. Recipe is here and I agree with the reviewer's commentary and tweaks. Leftovers make a great lunch.

-eggs with greens and hollandaise Wilt chard (or kale, or spinach), saute with onion and garlic, enrich with cream. Scoop the greens into ramekins, top with eggs, bake. Serve with big dollops of citrusy hollandaise. Fattening, maybe a little fussy, and definitely dirtied too many pans. I liked it, though. Mark liked it. Owen didn't like it and let me know and we had words.

I found this fascinating.

And I loved this movie, which Isabel and I saw when we were in NYC. The trailer itself is beautiful, the music haunting.