It's way easier if you get a third involved

So, it's only 3 weeks into the semester and I'm putting up a tip for my weekly post. Taneasha only thinks she wants to kill me. Next week, she'll see the wicked amazing dish I made that's taking a long time for me to get all together into one post.

For now, I thought I'd show you a little trick you might like to turn when you're separating eggs.

So, there's the yolk and the white and usually a bowl for each. But, what happens if you add a third to this happy little pair?

Part of the issue with separating eggs is that sometimes the yolk breaks. Especially when you're just starting out with baking and learning new techniques. I mean, juggling a delicate sac filled with gooey fluid between two tiny fragile cups with sharp edges? Does not sound easy. That's why sometimes it's handy to get a third party involved.

So, get yourself an egg. Gently tap it on the edge of a bowl to crack it, and then carefully pry the halves apart.

You're going to want to do this over a bowl because the white will immediately start to ooze out.

Now, gently ease the halves to the right and tip the yolk into the half shell in your right hand. More white will fall into the bowl.

Tip the other way and transfer the yolk to the left half of the shell. After doing this a couple times, you'll have all the white in the bowl and nothing left in the shells but the yolk.

Dump the yolk into the second bowl.

You just separated an egg!

But, you've got three more to go! I don't know, maybe you're making ice cream or merengues or something...

Before you grab another egg, grab another bowl.

Set your bowl of white aside and start the process again over the newly introduced third bowl.

When you've got your second egg separated, you'll have one bowl with 2 yolks, and two bowls with 1 white. Combine all the white into one bowl, whichever one you want.

Now you're back to a white bowl, a yolk bowl, and an empty bowl.

Why? Well, because if, as you were passing that delicate yolk back and forth over sharp edges, you happned to break the yolk as you were working over a bowl of egg white, you'd end up with a bowl of egg white and some yolk. That's kinda the opposite of separating eggs.

Sharp edges, see:

And it can be disastrous if you're trying to collect whites to whip into some kind of delicate and frothy delightful dessert.

By having a special third bowl to hover over while you're doing the separating, you're much less likely to end up contaminating your whites with yolk. I mean, if you're separating 5 or 6 eggs and on the last one you end up with yolk in the whites bowl... you're going to have to make a lot of bread pudding (sweet or savoury) to use all that egg.

So, 3 bowls: one for whites, one for yolks, and one to separate over. Best threesome ever.

perfect little snack

Roasted garlic is freaking awesome.

And on a holiday cheese platter, it looks really fancy.

Even if that's a little snack platter you make for yourself late at night while doing laundry in preparation for packing for your much needed winter break now that exams are over. (I don't want to talk about it)

The usual cheese and cracker plate looks fabulously impressive with a bulb or two in the middle, and it can also dress up a sausage and pickle tray too.

Unbelievably easy to make as well. And despite what some kitchenware stores would have you think, you don't need any fancy tools or single purpose gadgets to make it. (seriously, who the hell has the cupboard space for this shit?)

In a pure minimalist fashion, all you need is tinfoil.

What you need:

• garlic
• olive oil

believe it or not, this ingredient pic is not missing anything

if you want, you can add salt and/or pepper and/or oregano and/or rosemary and/or crushed dried red chili peppers depending on what flavours are on the rest of your platter, but absolutely none of these things are necessary (I do like a bit of rosemary on mine sometimes though)

What you gotta do:

Rub the bulb with your hands until most of the loose, dry, papery skin is gone. You should be able to see each of the outer cloves individually, but they should still have their skins on them.

Newer bulbs seem to hold on to the skin a bit better. Don't worry about getting it all off; you'll just have to work a bit more to get the yumminess inside. And don't worry if you accidentally bare a clove of garlic, it'll cook just the same without it. You could even actually peel them all and roast them bare, but that doesn't look as nice on the appy platter, and it's way too much work.

Set the bulb on some foil and turn up the edges to make a little bowl.

Drizzle a little bit of olive oil over the top.

More oil than that. I just wanted to post this pic because it's an action shot and I actually caught a tiny perfectly round drop of oil.

Yeah, more like that.

Fold the foil around the bulb.

Leave an opening in the top, and put this into a 400F oven. Dammit. Got all the ingredients in the pic but forgot the oven preheating step.

This will need about 45 minutes.

It isn't as long as you think. And if you've got 3 or 4 in there, you may need up to an hour. Your goal here is to caramelize the garlic a bit, much the same way you would with onions, but at a bit higher heat.

After about half an hour, your mouth will water at the smell. Sharp and garlicky, but slightly sweet as the delicious sugars start to ooze out of the papers (that's the popping sputtering sound you hear). Give it another 10 or 15 minutes and the sugars will do this:

Oh man, this is going to be fucking tasty.

With a bit of crusty french bread, some spicy sausage, a mild cheese, and omg you have to try pickled asparagus, this is a perfect miniature version of a nibbly tray.

What do you like to put on your nibbly trays?