A few years ago, Jackie invented a new spread for pre-dinner canapés: Pitted olives (usually a mix of intensely flavored green and black varieties) finely chopped in the food processor and blended with cream cheese and grated lemon zest.
At least we both thought she’d invented it: It turns out that cream cheese with (bland) olives can be found in supermarkets made by the company that sells those silver-wrapped blocks of Philadelphia cream cheese. But ours is better in every respect: more olives and far more olive flavor — and better cheese from a smaller New York State producer (Ben’s, if you should happen upon it).
That description of the spread is its recipe: Just tinker with the proportions until you get a mix you like. Ours is usually about two parts cream cheese to one part olives, but this varies depending on what we’ve got in the house. One caveat: Be sure there are no olive pits in the food processor bowl. If there is a stray pit, you’ll know instantly from the improbably noisy rattling when you turn on the machine. Turn it off instantly, retrieve the pit, and make sure it hasn’t been shattered, leaving unpleasant and dentally dangerous shards among the olives — in that case, you can either start again or poke through everything with your fingers and remove all the fragments.
We had some of this olive spread in the refrigerator, and we felt like eating eggs for dinner. Blending softened cream cheese with eggs yields a slightly tangy “batter” that can be gently butter-cooked into a tender variant on scrambled eggs. How much better a main course would this be with the added ferment-y ping of olives? A lot better.
For two as a main course, remove 1/2 cup (3–1/2 oz / 100 g) cream cheese-olive spread and five or six eggs from the refrigerator and let them approach room temperature for half an hour or so (they’ll blend better if not fridge-cold). Put the cheese mixture into a bowl and beat with a whisk to make sure it is soft and ready for the eggs. Now, whisk in the eggs one by one or two by two; continue whisking until the mixture is homogeneous. It is unlikely to need salt, but taste to make sure (a dribble of raw egg probably will not kill you). You could also add two tablespoons of chopped parsley and/or a half teaspoonful of chopped fresh thyme leaves.
Heat a 10-inch (25-cm) nonstick frying pan over medium heat; add 1 tablespoon (1/2 oz / 15 g) of butter and swirl it around as it melts to coat the pan evenly. Normally, you’d use a lot more butter, but with the cream cheese its flavor isn’t necessary, and the nonstick skillet makes it unlikely to be needed to keep the eggs from adhering to the pan. Add the egg mixture and proceed as for any panful of scrambled eggs: Use a rubber spatula to keep the eggs moving and to move cooked egg from the periphery of the pan to its center. When you have a moist but not runny mass — something in between oozy scrambled eggs and a soft, formless omelet — it’s time to move it to a serving dish or two warmed dinner plates.
Just so you know, because of the olives, this will not be your sunshine-yellow batch of scrambled eggs: It will look rather murky. But it will taste marvelous. In these proportions, the olives are not overwhelming, but are gorgeously present in every mouthful.
Serve with buttered grilled bread (baguette or sourdough) and perhaps some boiled potatoes that you’d roughly crushed and lightly crisped in butter before you started to cook the eggs.
Edward Schneider has been cooking since he was 9 and began writing about food, cooking, and travel soon after he learned to type.
