Because the egg is perfect in all ways, it is only left to us to ask, “What can you become?”
It’s a lovely Fall Monday morning illuminated by that special golden hue the sun lends this time of year. The dog is still in bed. The special parade of school bound children has passed my house. My efforts to begin the week anew involve pushing Sarah Palin from my head. I have to leave her to solve the problem of how she will exit the stage and return to her family who needs her more than I do. I’ll organize a yard sale of ideas concerning the economic crisis, arranging items according to their historicity, or hystericity. Are we revisiting 1830, 1930, 1960? I’ll toss speculations in a box marked “50 cent items” and see who takes what. In the space left behind, I have a vision of a perfection called the egg.
I see it clearly. Ovoid. Clean. Simple. Shell, white & yolk. When I cook it in its shell, I pierce the top with a push pin, an applied technique meant to release air and prevent the shell from cracking. A timer set for 4 minutes, during which time I toast my bread of choice to golden perfection. Sometimes I apply butter, sometimes I don’t. The egg in its shell is removed with a slotted spoon, run under cold water just long enough to allow me to handle the shell with my bare hands. I crack the shell deftly, splitting it so that the yolk rests intact in one half. I spoon the other half first onto the toast, following that gesture with a similar clean movement to remove the half with the yolk. When I do it right, the yolk stay intact. Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper complete the scene. I’m reminded that my friend Hsiao-Ching wrote about these eggs when she was Food Editor of the Seattle P-I.
Part of what makes simple things perfect is that they lend themselves effortlessly to other ideas. If, as I butter the bread, and before I nest the egg, I spread a small amount of blue cheese, I will have an entirely different beginning to the day. I have a friend in France who runs a Salon de the. She introduced me to the idea of soft boiled eggs, served in the shell, with fingers of buttered toast, lightly coated with Roquefort. It marked me forever.
If, instead of butter, I spoon a small amount of leftover tomato sauce, my day will take yet another direction, as I discovered after leaving home at 17. Once I found myself invited to an elegant table for breakfast. A friend of my host prepared a poached egg nested on leftover tomato sauce. She was Italian, from Providence and she taught me that the beauty of the egg is its adaptability.
If recipes direct us to make Moules Mariniere, the mussels of the fisherman’s wife, what prevents us from the realization that she also had a way of cooking the fisherman’s egg? When she took the mussels from the steaming liquid, she combined it with a little butter and flour to make a sauce which she chose to finish with a drop of cream. She did this as the egg poached, and the toast turned golden. The finished egg, nested onto the toast, was sauced and garnished with mussels. The first taste always transports me instantly to the Atlantic coast of France.
If you ate bacon and eggs in a place surrounded by the production of vast amounts of red wine, like Burgundy, it might occur to you to combine them. If that red wine producing place doesn’t think eggs are breakfast fare, you’re free to be inspired by lunch or dinner and your expectations might lead you to create eggs en meurette.
You would pan fry pieces of bacon, called lardons, until they give up their fat and start to brown. I prefer them crisp on the outside creamy inside. Remove them from the pan. Saute a tiny dice of onion, carrot and celery, with the addition of mushrooms, in the fat in the pan until the vegetables are soft and sweet. Add the red wine and reduce it slowly to the amount desired to produce sauce for the number of eggs being served. Some people poach the eggs in the red wine. I’m not considered a purist because I poach the egg separately. I can live with it.
Sometimes I add a little chicken broth to the wine reduction to lend a meaty balance. When the amount of sauce is near what I want, and the flavors are full of promise, I finish the wine sauce with a little fine butter. The egg goes into the bowl, followed by the red wine sauce, a scattering of chopped lardons and a flourish of salt and pepper. The toast sits in the middle of the table, to be taken or not. Attempt this at breakfast only when breakfast occurs after the clock strikes noon.
FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE STUDIO …. I am planning a Friday night spirited series – an end of the week call to the table. There is room for 16 people to gather for a meal informed by talent and dexterity. Put together a small group, or reserve and come on your own. Service begins at 6, or 8.30 and involves appetizer with aperitif, and a 3-course menu at $38.
October 10 menu inspired by Eggs en meurette, and the food of Lyon is BOOKED
October 17 is built around a harvest menu featuring Chicken with green grape sauce
October 24 menu features a roast of Carlton pork with peppered fruit
October 31 menu ends on a note of roasted quince tarts
Email robeirt@comcast.net to reserve. It will happen only this Fall because I’m in the mood to be festive.
