by Crystal Sands
If you have chickens, you are going to have a lot of eggs, and if you have a lot of eggs, you are going to want to get this cookbook. In The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook, Lisa Steele shares delicious recipes with fresh ingredients–all with the home cook who loves eggs in mind.
Because eggs are so dear to me, Lisa’s cookbook is just a treat. There are so many things to love about this book. I love that Lisa uses fresh ingredients. Too many cookbooks these days use a lot of processed ingredients, which aren’t good for anyone, so having access to recipes that are still simple to make but use fresh ingredients makes a world of difference to me as a home cook. The photos in this cookbook are beautiful, and the publisher so wisely bound the cookbook in a way that it will lay flat while you are cooking. This is such an important feature in a cookbook because you just don’t want to have to stack things on either side of your pages in order to follow a recipe.
The overall organization of the book is highly effective. The table of contents provides a lovely overview of egg basics and then recipes arranged by meal–breakfast, brunch to lunch, sips and nibbles, dinner, and sweets. You will also find instructions on how to make good boiled eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, and more. I think my favorite part of this cookbook is the recipe index. In addition to a traditional index, there is a “Recipe Index by Number of Eggs Needed.” For example, Fluffy Vanilla Pancakes require two eggs; Bacon and Eggs Pizza requires five eggs, and Boston Cream Pie requires nine eggs.
I had the honor of sitting with the author, Lisa Steele, to talk with her about her book. If you don’t know Lisa Steele (and there’s a good chance you do), she is the famous creator of Fresh Eggs Daily. Through her television show, books, blog, and social media pages, Lisa Steele has been teaching about natural, healthy chicken care for years, and she has amassed a monumental following. She has appeared on a variety of television shows and was featured on NPR for this very cookbook.
I asked about her preparation for this cookbook because it’s the best egg cookbook I have seen–and I am always looking for egg cookbooks. Lisa said she “bought pretty much every cookbook ever made on eggs and made all kinds of notes.” She said so many of the cookbooks she saw didn’t truly feature eggs in the way she wanted to.
When we talked about the focus on fresh ingredients in her book, Lisa said that was definitely a goal for her. She wanted to share recipes with good, quality ingredients with recipes that would be so simple to make from scratch. Lisa said she also had a goal to repeat ingredients in the book so that people wouldn’t have to go out and buy a lot of unusual ingredients that they would use once and never use again. She added that she also has a thing for cardamom.
“I’m on a mission to get everyone to use cardamom, and I try to create repetition. I want people to be able to keep using that ingredient,” Lisa said.
After a cookbook that so beautifully encapsulates the joy of cooking with eggs, I asked Lisa Steele what was next for her. She said she’s working an another egg cookbook. She said this cookbook presents eggs in a more traditional way, and her next book presents “eggs in a more edgy way…if eggs can be edgy,” she adds.
I can’t wait to see her next book, but in the meantime, I am treasuring this one. Lisa generously offered a link to this recipe for Boston Cream Pie to give Farmer-ish readers a glimpse of one of the recipes in her lovely book, but you will definitely want buy this book to access all of these recipes.
The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook by Lisa Steele is published by Harper Horizon, and you can get your copy at Bookshop or bookstores everywhere.