Lent was a serious fast with no meat or animal products
allowed. Gradually the notion of Lenten observance was
eroded, meat being allowed into the diet once a day –
but not on Fridays. Central to the Lenten fast was the
proscription on eggs; it was to use up any eggs that one
made pancakes on the last day before the fasting began.
Similarly the Easter egg was the celebration of the end of
the fast and, of course, the arrival of spring and some fresh
food in a diet dominated by store crops and little else. It
was not for nothing that the period of fasting coincided
with the period when there was not much to eat anyway.
I see some point in abstaining from eggs. I don’t like
to see them taken for granted. In professional kitchens
nowadays eggs rarely come in their usual form of
packaging, the ovoid porous shell that we know of old
and that breaks easily when dropped. Most eggs used for
baking or any other application will come from a carton of
pasteurised yolks or whites. I remember a young Mexican
commis chef who was given the job of breaking sixty eggs
for a cake mixture and proceeded to execute the task,
bringing each egg up to his nose to ascertain it was good.
I think a little of that reverence is rather admirable.
49
February
OEUFS EN MEURETTE
Any sauce left over can always be added to a stew.
Serves four as a starter or two
for a lunch or supper dish.
80g (3oz) smoked bacon
75g (23⁄4oz) butter
10 fat spring onions,
top half removed
1 teaspoon golden caster
sugar
150g (5½oz) button
mushrooms
a squeeze of lemon juice
4 slices of bread, cut into
round toasts
½ bottle of red wine
4 eggs
1 shallot, peeled and sliced
1 garlic clove, peeled and
sliced
15g (½oz) plain flour
2 sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf
salt
Cut the bacon into little lardons, saving the rind and any
trimmings for the sauce. Bring the lardons to the boil in a
small pan of cold water, then drain and run under a cold
tap. Melt a tablespoon of the butter in a frying pan and fry
the lardons until crisp and brown, then remove them. In
the same fat, colour the spring onions and sugar over a
high heat. Add a pinch of salt and enough water to cover,
then turn the heat down and soften gently for 15 minutes.
Save the mushrooms stalks for the sauce and add the
caps to the spring onions, with a squeeze of lemon juice.
Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter in a frying pan and fry
the bread rounds until golden brown.
Bring the red wine to the boil in a small saucepan.
Break each egg into a cup and, when the wine is
simmering, slip an egg into the pan, waiting each time for
the wine to return to a good simmer before dropping the
next egg into the pan. As soon as the whites are firmly set
and the eggs feel lightly done, lift them out and place them
carefully into a bowl of iced water. Once cooled, pat the
eggs dry and trim the edges of any trailing white.
Meanwhile, sauté the shallot, garlic, chopped bacon
trimmings and mushroom stalks in a tablespoon of the
butter. Once softened, add the flour and cook in the butter
to make a little roux. Pour in the wine in which you have
poached the eggs and allow it to come to a rolling boil.
Add the thyme and bay leaf and simmer and reduce slowly
for 15 minutes. Strain the sauce into another saucepan and
bring to a simmer.
Slip the eggs into the gently simmering sauce to heat
them through, making sure the yolk is still soft. Place an
egg on each piece of toast and keep warm in a low oven.
Warm the mushrooms, lardons and spring onions in
the sauce, enrich it with the remaining butter, and check
it for seasoning. Pour it over the eggs on toast and serve.
WINE: Oeufs en Meurette is Burgundian but there is not
much Burgundy around that I would be prepared to pour
into a pan, even for this recipe. A robust country red is
appropriate, half in the pan and half to drink.
50
Smoke Without Fire
Smoked Haddock Tartare
* Le Poulbot was a Roux
brothers outpost in the city
where I first cut my teeth as
a head chef.
**Alan was the doyen of PR
in the restaurant world.
He was a man of great
intelligence and charm,
coupled with an engaging
but dissolute lifestyle.
I was the chef of Le Poulbot* in the mid-1980s, a time when
being a chef was becoming a vaguely trendy, socially
acceptable occupation. Several chefs, including Simon
Hopkinson, Alastair Little, Nico Ladenis and Pierre
Koffmann, were invited to have lunch cooked for them by
the critics. Our hosts were the Blonds, the irreplaceable,
charming publisher Anthony and his equally eccentric
wife Laura, who inhabited an enormous flat in a converted
warehouse somewhere near the river in Bermondsey.
Restaurant critics were then something of a novelty, so
the relatively small brigade was augmented by food writers
and