Recipe: The Perfect Egg Sandwich

You need a small cast-iron pan...

Ingredients

• Artisan bread
• Butter
• Farm-fresh egg
• Salt/pepper
• Japanese mayonnaise (Kewpie)
• A handful of arugula (basil is nice too)
• Tomato, sliced
• Bacon, cooked

Preparation

Heat up the cast-iron pan on medium heat while toasting two slices of bread.

Melt butter in the pan and, once hot, add cracked egg. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the egg and let it cook for three to five minutes, depending on how well-done you like your egg.

In the meantime, spread mayonnaise on each slice of toasted bread. Add a handful of arugula to the bottom slice, place egg on top, add tomato and bacon and cover with the other slice.

Eat and resist the temptation to make another one.

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Read the story of a Boulder ad and marketing exec whose Griswold #2, a gift he'd only come to appreciate years later, reminds him to try new things in life.

It'll Pan Out

To eat an egg, you must break the shell. How my cast-iron pan became a symbolic reminder to take risks and try new things. The reward is tremendous and defining. I remember the first time I went fly fishing. It was a disaster. But I loved it. Being on the water hunting fish is a grand way to spend the day. It took me three seasons to get to the point where I can consistently catch fish. It’s a process. You need to find where the fish are. Determine what they eat. Place the fly so perfectly the fish think it’s real. Pray the fish strikes. Set the hook. Fight the fish. Land it. Your reward? You get to hold in your hands a magnificent creature . . . only to release it, so you can catch again another day. The process never gets old. The reward is extraordinary.

I’m fortunate that I was open to learning something new and had a good friend willing to teach me. In hindsight, he gave me an incredible gift neither of us recognized at the time. Sharing and being open to trying new things takes courage on both sides. It’s worth it, though. You learn who you are, what makes you happy, what drives you, and what you want to do with your life. I call it perspective. Others call it wisdom. Whatever it may be, I just wish it hadn’t taken me so long to realize, because there were many things along the way I didn’t try.

“Sharing and being open to trying new things takes courage on both sides, but it’s worth it.”

Kitchen memoirs

Each time I did have the courage to expose myself to something new, the experience had a profound impact on who I am today. At the time, it’s hard to know this. So you need to find courage to be out of your comfort zone.

When I was in college, I took a big risk plunging into a new experience. My father invited me to spend the summer with him and his wife on Block Island, Rhode Island. I had visited the island many times and loved it, but had never lived there, nor had I lived with my dad in quite some time. I was apprehensive. It was unfamiliar territory.

My father and his wife, Cynthia, live a life filled with the simple pleasures of food, wine, art, and entertaining—he, ever the consummate host, and she, chef extraordinaire. Thanks to his encyclopedic knowledge of wine, Dad has an interesting story to pair with whatever is in your glass, making every sip taste that much better. And Cynthia’s cooking is so effortless, the first bite makes you wonder how long it took her to make this food.

Life was relaxing at their comfortable house on a quiet dirt road. The sound of the crashing surf, trails to the beach or to town right out the back door. The bountiful garden grew every imaginable vegetable. When I close my eyes, I can still see the delicate squash, the bright green asparagus, the leafy arugula. It was an idyllic spot. A nostalgic place and a sense of life I wish I could revisit every year.

During that summer, I was exposed to something that has since become a defining part of who I am: good food. Cynthia subtly shared her love for food with me. She didn’t ask me to cook or to work in the garden or even to clean up the kitchen. Instead, she made delicious, satisfying food for me. All of the time. Each meal had ingredients from the garden, contributing to the fresh, delicious flavors. I don’t remember her actually showing me how to make any of it. I observed and asked questions. It was obvious she loved to cook. It was during that summer she instilled that same passion in me. I just didn’t know it yet.

"It was obvious she loved to cook. It was during that summer she instilled that same passion in me. I just didn’t know it yet."

The gifted Griswold

When I left the island to go back to school, Cynthia gave me a cast-iron pan. A Griswold #2, actually. I couldn’t have imagined then that a small pan would one day become such an essential part of my everyday life. When I dug out the Griswold years later, I realized the gift’s significance. It wasn’t just an amazing antique pan that’s incredibly hard to find nowadays, it was a gift that carried with it my love of food.

For the past fifteen years, I’ve been cooking all sorts of things—exploring different techniques, different combinations, growing my own vegetables, hosting dinner parties, challenging friends to cook-offs. I scour the latest cookbooks and food magazines for inspiration on what to make next. Cooking has become my passion, a gift that now I love to share with friends and family.

My favorite dish Cynthia would prepare in her cast-iron pan was an egg sandwich. I’m sharing how to make this sandwich with the hope it will push you, too, to try something new or bring back memories of a forgotten experience that may have made you who you are today. So here’s to summer. A time when the sun rises earlier, giving you extra time to sit, enjoy a tasty breakfast sandwich, and reflect. A time of renewal. A time to try new things. A process worth repeating over and over again. The reward is life-changing.

In Memoriam

I wrote this essay, which originally appeared in print in Alpine Modern 02, to honor my father and his wife, Cynthia. In the months since then, sadly, Cynthia has passed away. But I am enormously thankful she was able to enjoy this story—her story—and learn how much of an impact she had on me and my family. We love you, Cynthia.

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Recipe: The Perfect Egg Sandwich

You need a small cast-iron pan...

Go to recipe »

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How to season a cast-iron pan

• Wash your pan in hot soapy water to remove any surface oils. Then heat in a 200oF (ca. 90oC) oven until completely dry. The heat will also “open up” the iron, making it more accepting of the seasoning.
• Apply a thin coat of flaxseed oil to the hot pan. Coat it entirely. You’ll want to use an oven mitt since the pan will be hot.
• Wipe away all of the remaining oil. There will still be a very thin coat on the pan, but it should not appear oily. Using too much oil will result in streaks and a sticky surface.
• Bake the pan upside down in a 500º F (ca. 260º C) oven for 30 minutes. Then shut the oven o and let the pan cool inside. Heating the oil will cause it to create polymer chains, making for a dark, smooth surface.
• Repeat this seasoning process at least three times before cooking in a brand-new pan. The seasoning will continue to build as you use the pan, becoming darker and increasingly nonstick. The pan will also be easier to clean as the seasoning layers build.

Morning Light

We are lucky to live in a place of sublime beauty. Navajo people have a prayer chant where they wish that you may “walk in beauty.” May beauty be before you, behind you, above, below, and to your sides. How true, how wise, how kind to wish beauty upon others. Morning light gives credence to this chant. It envelops you from the moment a new day emerges from the night. Morning light rains kinetic showers of warm pinks, peaches, yellows, crimson reds, purples, and grays across the blue sky, on what would be the world’s grandest abstract canvas.

We are seeing a continuously changing assembly of atmospherics. Heat, condensation, moisture, particles, clouds, objects, reflections, highlights, washes, gradations, and shadows are all building into a crescendo that peaks with the sun’s appearance.

Morning light starts in the middle of the night, when the sun’s penumbral rays start to dispel the dark night sky. As Earth rotates, bringing our location on the globe closer to those rays, the sky lightens and morning begins. Each minute as we get closer, morning light collides with atmospherics and intensifies silent celestial fireworks.

When the sun finally appears, it often announces itself with bright beams of gold shot between clouds to signal exactly where it will emerge. Soon, there is a blinding, brilliant blade of searing light that cuts a line between the horizon and sky. Drivers reach for their window sun-flaps, then their Ray-Bans. That direct light just traveled ninety-three million miles from our sun in about 500 seconds at more than 670 million miles per hour to enter our retinas and wake up our brains.

Dimensionality

Many days begin and end with awe-inspiring skies. Sunrise starts with a beauty that can inspire our productive hours with creativity and meaning. Sunsets, at day’s end, settle us down for evening hours, meals, pleasure, rest, and dreams. Morning light is a wake-up call of excitement and drama. It sends light to the side of a form, texture, or pattern. Objects become sandwiched between intense, warm light and deep, cool shadows adding depth and volume. Morning light increases visibility by accentuating dimensionality. The use of warm and cool light together draws a wider range of emotional responses. This broad spectrum of colors enhances both what is in focus and the surrounding aura. Natural and built worlds are made more vivid and emotive by this light. Artists, including Rembrandt, Raphael, and Rubens, used a similar light quality called chiaroscuro to heighten appeal for their work.

Many metaphors are drawn from morning light and mornings. They permeate the arts and humanities: painting, sculpture, music, poetry, literature, philosophy, psychology, and cinema. Morning light signifies many qualities of life. New beginnings, restarting, refreshing, reviving, replenishing, recovery. “Things will be better in the morning.” “There’s light at the end of the tunnel.” Each morning provides a new chance to redo and renew, the opportunity to be better, be more, or just be.

“Each morning provides a new chance to redo and renew, the opportunity to be better, be more, or just be.”

The quest for improvement and realizing positive outcomes is essential for our personal and evolutionary progress. Mornings and morning light symbolize hope for betterment.

Emotions are fueled by sensations. Morning light clearly sets the stage for our daily lives, experiences, and dramas. It also cues the transition from night sounds to morning sounds. There is a quiet nightly dissolve from the crescendo of cricket choruses to the gentle cooing of doves at daybreak. Morning light further signals the end to night sounds and the start of human and urban cacophony.

What are the flavors of morning light? Fresh as oranges, lemons, or mint. The crunch of an apple, crisp as cucumber, or the tart, pure flavor burst of pomegranate seeds. Mornings are cool, clean, and as subtle as the flavor of fresh chilled water from a stream. Morning light is the flavor of fine, smooth, cold saki.

As morning light activates temperature and pressure zones, it draws the mountain perfume scents of meadows and forests to lower elevations. Prevailing winds carry scents farther. Fresh oxygen just extracted from forests, meadows, lakes, rivers, and glaciers energizes us. We breathe deeply of the crisp, clean fortifying mountain air, scented with pine, spruce, and wildflowers, that accompanies morning light.

Vincent van Gogh was drawn to the distinct quality of light he found in Arles, France. He was inspired, as was Gauguin, to capture its colors in his paintings. The morning light of the mountains stimulates our desire for beauty and the sublime. The clarity of morning light feels tangible, visceral, as though we are looking at something cast into a clear crystal cube.

Morning shadows

Morning light throws the longest shadows, which become abstractions of their sources. These shadows move as silent serpents would over land, leaving no trace. Shadows are cool, often painted in violets, while their origins are warm, colored by the full beam of sunlight.

Winter morning light on frosted plants sitting in mounds of soft snow creates a sculptural garden. Beautiful tableaux can be found everywhere. A patch of crooked dried brown stems emerging from a rolling base of pure white snow with extended blue shadows makes a perfect composition. Morning light invites exploration and curiosity just when our day is beginning and before the midday sun reduces shadows, melts forms, and erases what the winter night has gently placed for our discovery.

Morning light reinvigorates an experience with dynamic and stimulating sensations. Visually dazzling crisp, clean air, fresh scents, soothing sounds make a compelling day’s start. Morning light gives us a dose of beauty, meaning, and connection, just at the right time. △

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Richard Foy, former art director for Charles and Ray Eames and founding partner of CommArts design firm, has designed many brand identities and places worldwide, including Madison Square Garden (New York City), O2 Dome (London, UK), Pearl Street Mall (Boulder, Colorado), LA Live (Los Angeles, California), as well as the branding for Spyder Sportswear, and Star Trek — The Motion Picture.