French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [107]
Stuffed hard-boiled eggs, however carefully and subtly made the stuffing, nearly always finish up by being dull. I have tried many sound French and other recipes for such dishes, and invariably found them lacking in charm; with a sauce they become stodgy; without one, dry. If it is a question of improvising in an emergency, I think it is preferable to serve hard-boiled eggs quite plain as a salad, with a vinaigrette dressing, with mayonnaise, or perhaps heated up in a tomato sauce, thereby dispensing with the fiddling jobs of mashing up sardines or anchovies, taking the yolks out of the eggs, putting them back again, decorating the dish and all the rest of it.
Recipes for œufs mayonnaise and other cold egg dishes will be found in the hors-d’œuvre chapter.
ŒUFS À LA TRIPE
(Also called Œufs à la Lyonnaise)
In a thick frying pan, stew lb. very finely sliced mild onions in 1 oz. butter until they turn pale yellow; season them with salt, pepper and nutmeg, stir in a dessertspoon of flour and, when it has amalgamated, pour in pint of milk. Cook gently for 15 to 20 minutes. If the sauce becomes too thick, add a little more milk or cream. Carefully incorporate 4 thickly sliced hard-boiled eggs and shake the pan without stirring until the eggs are hot. At the last minute add a good lump of butter cut into little pieces and, when it has melted, transfer to a hot serving dish. A silver entrée dish, it used to be, until such things were replaced with fireproof glass, for this dish was at one time immensely popular in England as a first course at luncheon. It was also known under the name of Convent Eggs, the other alternative name of œufs à /a lyonnaise being due to the presence of the onions in the sauce, since onions are associated by popular tradition with the cookery of Lyon.
ŒUFS DURS SOUBISE
HARD-BOILED EGGS WITH ONION AND CREAM SAUCE
Quite often in cookery one comes across two or more dishes containing almost identical ingredients and seasonings, but which yet turn out to be quite different in taste and appearance. Œufs à la tripe and œufs durs soubise provide one such example, the latter having, to my mind, greater charm and finesse.
For the sauce: lb. onions weighed when peeled, 1oz. butter, pint of veal or chicken stock or milk, 1 scant dessertspoon of flour, salt, freshly ground white pepper, nutmeg and 2 or 3 tablespoons of cream.
Melt the finely sliced onions in the butter; when they are transparent and very pale yellow, after about 7 minutes, stir in the flour; add the warmed stock or milk and seasoning. Simmer gently for 15 minutes until the onions are quite soft. Sieve. Return the purée to the saucepan and if it is too thick add a little more stock; if too thin, let it reduce a little. If you like, it can be flavoured with a teaspoon of French mustard.
Hard boil 4 eggs, shell them while still warm, cut them in quarters lengthways, arrange them in circles in a round shallow fireproof egg dish in which they just fit. Over them pour the hot sauce, on top trickle the cream and then add a small sprinkling of very fine breadcrumbs. Put on the top shelf of a very hot oven for 5 minutes.
If you have an electric blender in which to purée the sauce, it can be made without the thickening of flour, and is all the better and lighter.
ŒUFS SUR LE PLAT, AU PLAT, AU MIROIR (1)
Œufs sur le plat are fried eggs served in the dishes in which they have cooked, shallow metal, earthenware or other fireproof utensils with a little handle at each side; butter is melted in the dishes, and the eggs, usually 2 per person, previously broken into a plate, are slid gently in. Cover the pans, so that the eggs acquire their characteristic mirrored appearance without the business of spooning the whites over the yolks. Cook either on top of the stove over a low flame or in a moderate oven until the whites are set. About 4 minutes in a moderate oven should be enough, but timing depends as much