Do you own a microwave?

[Jeff Grossman/NYC]

Unless you pricked the shells with a pin first, you probably had oeufs a la hand grenade!

[Frank Deis]

Unless you pricked the shells with a pin first, you probably had oeufs a la hand grenade!

The quail eggs had been shelled -- but it is the membrane around the yolk that makes eggs explode in the microwave. These were soft-boiled so the yolks were liquid and membranes intact. So it was maximum mess, "pop -- pop -- POW" and suddenly there was brunoise and butter and egg yolk all over the inside of the microwave. And no delicious breakfast. Kind of a memorable clean-up.

Still the dish was totally worth it, and I've made it a few times (but never repeated the m-wave mistake!)

[Jenise]

Like everyone else--I don't 'cook' in it per se, but I re-heat, melt, etc, and don't use it every day. When I remodeled the kitchen, so low a priority is this device that I bought a 'bookshelf' model and designed a small shelf for it out of sight in the walk-in pantry.

[Mike Filigenzi]

One more microwave story, sorry if I've told this here. To understand fully, you have to know what a brunoise is. Maybe everyone here has made a brunoise, but I doubt that so I'll describe it. Your goal is to take part of a carrot, a leek leaf, and a turnip, and turn them into little jewel like cubes about 1/32 of an inch on a side. The thickness of the leek leaf is about right for the height of the cubes. When you are done it looks a little like sand. So it is a lot of very fussy knife work.

Having seen a perfect brunoise, I feel like I'm years of knife practice away from being able to cut things up like that. Is it as difficult as it looks?

[Frank Deis]

Mike, I bet that if you sat down and put your mind to it you wouldn't find it all that hard. I suppose it helps to think about X, Y, and Z axes. It would take all day to make a whole carrot's worth or a whole turnip's worth of brunoise but you start by cutting a little cube of carrot or turnip. Then you shave off equal square slices of the cube, try to keep them thin and the same width. Then you turn the stack of slices 90 degrees and try to shave off equal slices from the side, giving you tiny "match sticks." Keeping things kind of stacked and organized helps a lot with saving time. Then take your pile of matchsticks, rotate 90 degrees on the cutting board, and cut a zillion cubes with each slice. So no, I don't suppose it is all that "hard", just fussy and time consuming.

And that's why I never make quail eggs with brunoise and lego bacon in a silver spoon for my own breakfast. You really want to have an audience for that kind of showing off. Having it as one course in a fancy dinner party for 10 people is just about right.

[Mike Filigenzi]

Thanks, Frank. You have me thinking I should give it a try.