Sue grows eleven varieties of apples on her seaside farm in British Columbia and says that the best apples for this recipe are hard and crisp, so the slices stay discrete during cooking. For her this means Transparent apples in the summer, and Gravensteins or Kings in the autumn. The best grocery store apple to use is the Granny Smith. Softer apples will still taste good, but will melt down and not make as pretty a finished dish.
Armida only stuffed and boiled a chicken for Christmas and Ferragosto (August 15, the assumption of the Virgin Mary). We ate the simple chicken together on Ferragosto. To this day Armida's chickens are her most prized possession; she has many, and the hens all produce dozens of orange-yolked eggs. She said that although she has no money and was not able to marry well, at least now she can feed everyone very well. Armida used foraged borage leaves as the greens for her stuffing; if you do not have access to them, spinach, chard, and stinging nettles all make good substitutes.
After Armida had prepared her bone broth, she cooked with it to create a variety of different dishes. Her favorite way to consume the broth was simply, with only a small handful of tiny pasta simmered into it; she didn't miss her absent teeth in her enjoyment of it. When Armida sent me home with a jarful of broth, a freshly laid egg, and a shoot of green garlic, I discovered my own favorite way to use the broth: I made a simple chicken soup by simmering the garlic, fresh herbs, and Armida's orange-yolked egg right in the mineral-rich broth. Just as Armida described, I found the broth to be deeply restorative, and cooked in this way it seemed the perfect joining of chicken and egg.
This appetizer dish is a tribute to the three foods Armida loved most from her farm: alliums (members of the onion/garlic family), eggs, and olives. In particular, Armida favored alliums, always growing many varieties of them to add to soups and sauces, and to pound into pesto for testaroli. One of my favorite ways to eat leeks is slowly roasted in a cooling wood-burning oven until they become crispy and slightly sweet. Roasting them in a regular oven produces a very similar effect, one that is complemented perfectly by a dip into a soft-boiled egg and a bite of salty olive. These leeks are rich, and make for a somewhat addictive and unusual hors d’oeuvre.
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