Every week, your challenge is to create an eye-opening dish within our capricious themes and parameters. Blog your submission on Open Salon under your real name by Monday 10 a.m. EST -- with photos and your story behind the dish -- and we'll republish the winners on Salon on Tuesday. (It takes only 30 seconds to start a blog.) And yes, mashed potato sculpture counts as a dish. Emphatically.
THIS WEEK'S WINNER!
Mamie Chen! For fantastically fun Rice Krispies treats "sushi," complete with "soy sauce," "wasabi" and "miso soup." (Recipes included.)
AND HOW ABOUT A HAND FOR OUR CATEGORY WINNERS?
In the Incredible, Edible Egg category:
The egg may or may not be the perfect food, but it is apparently the most imitable. We have not one but two entries for fake deviled eggs: Rebecca Farwell with gorgeous, creamy panna cotta eggs with lemon-curd yolks (method included), and Beans&Greens with a vegan deviled egg: tofu fashioned into snacks that "look like they popped out of a demonically possessed chicken." (Recipe included.) And if all that wasn't enough baby bird, Jenna Charlton also popped by with fried eggs and ketchup or, rather, peaches and yogurt with raspberry-maple syrup sauce to entice her picky son. (Recipe included.)
In the Ice Cream Castles category:
Lucy Mercer, who shows us how to mold and coat ice cream with brown sugar to look like sand castles. (Recipe for Sand Castle Ice Cream Cake included.)
In the Vegetarian category:
Linda Shiue, for her mother's brazen attempts at slipping meat into her vegetarian daughter's dinner. (Recipe for Mock Duck Thai Red Curry included.)
And finally, in the Optical Illusion category:
Spaceman's Hairdo, with a fun way to make geometric shapes seem to float forth from a batch of sugar cookies, using a phenomenon called Kanizsa triangle. (Method included.)
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AND NOW, FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE
Whether or not you dyed hard-boiled eggs dainty colors and rolled them around with children this past weekend, it's easy to understand why eggs are such a symbol of the rebirth of spring. And there is a quality of the just-turning-to-warmer-weather in egg salad, a paradox of richness and lightness.
So I love egg salad. But even I was a little surprised when I recently tweeted, "Egg salad. Discuss." Tweets came flying back at me, herby talk of dill and basil and parsley; salty words like capers and anchovies and pickles. Curry? Jalapenos?
That was just the beginning of it, as people came, too, insisting on particular breads: whole wheat, homemade rolls, toasted challah. Even crackers and the South American corn cakes called arepas.
And then there were those who swore the key is in a particular doneness of egg: boiled 10 minutes, exactly, and chilled in ice water.
I had no idea how unique egg salads could be -- and how committed people could be to their versions. So this week, share your greatest egg salad with us! What seasonings or garnishes do you use? What do you serve it on? How do you cook your eggs? I'll be waiting, a spoon in hand.
Be sure to tag your posts: SKC egg salad
Scoring and winning
Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity, execution and gratuitous use of the words "eggceptional," "eggsactly," and other eggcelent puns.
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