Oeufs en Meurette

"Poached Eggs in Red Wine Sauce"

JP1 (Julie Powell) and JP2 (James Peterson) are both right about one thing: poaching eggs is *hard.

To my knowledge, JP3 (J.P. II) never held forth on this topic.

Three eggs went into the simmering water. Fine so far. The white part had two sections: a disc across the bottom of the pan, which I assumed would be discarded, and a little cloudlike shape around the yolk, which I think is the part that was correct. Then these went into a bowl of ice water (really? ok) and into the fridge.

The meurette part was kinda familiar to me, as I made an attempt at this red-wine sauce several months ago. That attempt was way too acidic/sour, and Peterson suggests fixing this by sauteeing mirepoix with a slice of prosciutto end until it's caramelized and somewhat sweet. Plus salty.

Central Market sells prosciutto ends ("Central Market" is the Texan word for "Paradise on Earth"), so I got one, plus a dozen normal slices for a use to be determined later (Endives au jambon, maybe?). This technique worked pretty-much perfectly; I added a cup of red wine, boiled this down to syrup, drank one cup of red wine, and then added the other cup to the sauce (a bottle contains 3 cups). This cooked for 30 minutes, and then thickened with buerre manié

Making buerre manié is fun. you get a chunk of butter in one hand and a bunch of flour in the other and you smash them together. Quickly, so that you don't melt the butter with the heat from your hands. You get something like soft dough which would probably be tasty to just eat. But don't.

The poached eggs, 2/3 of which fall pretty much apart as I take them out of the ice water, go onto slices of bread sauteed in butter and look awesome. Then the purple meurette goes over them, and you stick it with your fork, and the yolk bursts and everything blurs together into a gory mess. Which is delicious.

Peterson also recommends making green salads with mostly arugula and basil. Sounded odd to me, but these leaves have a lot of flavor and worked great with some spinach.

Reaction Rundown:
Ben and Sasha forewent the oeufs en meurette and had pasta.
Otto loved the oeufs -- they remind him of Mimi's Toast and Eggs. He stressed out about the arugula though.
Sarah seemed happy, which surprised me 'cause I think she hates runny eggs.

So?

I couldn't think of anything to write a blog about, so I am reusing someone else's idea. So?

About a year ago, I went to the library hoping to find an interesting cookbook. "Interesting" in this context means:

-Can be read for the pure joy of reading, away from the kitchen
-Is about a cool region of the world, but mostly talks about cooking technique
-Rachael Ray is not on the cover

While I'm looking, Otto the great chimes in with "you should get this one" and has retrieved what looks like an encyclopedia. I take a look and realize he's right. I should get this one. It's Glorious French Food by James Peterson and it becomes the best cookbook I've ever held in my hands.

As I read, the style seems familiar, and to confirm a suspicion I hunt down an old issue of Saveur and realize that, yes, Peterson wrote one of my favorite articles ever, about Escoffier-style sauces yielding to the nouveau cuisine approach in the late 20th century. Awesome.

So I thought: I know! I'll cook every recipe in this book, blog about it, and sell the movie rights to Norah Ephron.

Just kidding. I figured it'd be Werner Herzog.

After a few weeks of fiddling around and loving every minute of it, I had to return GFF to the library and pay a late fee. Fast forward to me receiving an amazon gift certificate for Christmas (2009), from my boss. And for a mere $13 + shipping I've got my very own 742 pages of scrumptious. There are even a dozen or so blanks at the back for "Notes", which I can write on 'cause this is mine all mine!

I'll introduce myself more completely later if you want. For now you can do a background check by googling "Mateo_LeFou".