We can all take a lesson from the French when it comes to cooking eggs. In France the egg comes into its own, not only as a simple as delicious breakfast food, but as gourmet fare as well
– Margaret Fulton
We can also all take a lesson from modern sensibility in creating an introductory photo for a chapter.
1977 says…Copper pots, geraniums, mushrooms and tomatoes on top of omelettes, more tomatoes, more mushrooms, is that some cheese on the left? There’s definitely a teapot and some mugs and some eggs. So busy…
I love eggs and am always happy to find a delicious new egg recipe. And these Eggs Gratinée could become one of my very favourites. It is:
Quick to prepare
Uses basic ingredients
Tastes delicious
Which ticks all my boxes for a quick weeknight supper.
And let’s not forget the absolute joy of cutting open that egg to see it still a little bit runny!!!!
This is like a Welsh Rarebit with Eggs. If you want to make it even more rarebitty, you can add a splash of Worchestershire sauce and a dollop of mustard into the sauce before grilling
The recipe made a lot more sauce than I needed for my eggs. Which was fine – it meant that there was leftover sauce to remake this for lunch the following day. If you are doing this, you can also poach some extra eggs and keep them in the fridge overnight. Lunch will be ready in less than 10!
A salad is the perfect healthy accompaniment to this. But if you wanted to have a side of chips to dip into the sauce, I won’t tell anyone!
Melt the butter in a saucepan over high heat, and the flour and stir until sandy coloured (2-3 minutes).
Gradually add the milk, whisking to remove any lumps. Bring to the simmer.
Remove from the heat and stir through the grated cheese.
Poach the eggs in simmering water until soft poached (2-3 minutes).
Pop the bread into the toaster.
Preheat your grill to high
Once the toast has popped, rub each slice with the garlic clove. Place the toast into an ovenproof dish. Top with the eggs then spoon the sauce over.
Place under the grill until the sauce is golden and bubbly (2-3 minutes, but check frequently)
Sprinkle with cayenne pepper and garnish with some herby greenery
Serve with a salad.
Notes
Note: I did not add salt to this dish because I thought there was enough salt in the cheese. If you want more salt or freshly ground black pepper instead of the cayenne, grind it over at the end where I used the cayenne.
There’s not much more to say for such a simple recipe except
WE ARE FINALLY OUT OF LOCKDOWN TOMORROW!!!!
Shops are opening, restaurants are opening pubs are opening. I can get a hair cut and my legs waxed. In a week gyms will open and statewide travel restrictions will lift. I am both overjoyed and a little nervous. Now that it’s so close I am a little bit scared about being out the world again….
Towards the end of the second Fridge, Freezer, Pantry week I used up some Bolognese sauce which had been in the freezer. The first meal I made from this little batch of Bolognese was a traditional Spag Bol. Lovely, tasty, delicious spag bol However, there was still a little sauce and pasta left over so I decided to cook up a dish that had been on my radar for a while now – a Spaghetti Bolognese Omelette!
This recipe comes from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Love Your Leftovers. This is a very handy book if you are keen to reduce your food waste.
So, as I was making this, delusions of grandeur were flitting through my head. What if the Spaghetti Bolognese Omelette…or the Spag-Om / Bol was to become the viral fusion food of 2020? Move over Dominque Ansell and take your cronuts with you! This is the year in which coronavirus and the Spag-Om™ take over the world. Before you start to mock me, remember that I have been in lockdown pretty much since March. That’s FOUR months. As of the coming Wednesday, we cannot even step out of our houses without wearing masks. No wonder I’m becoming delusional
So is the world ready for the launch of the Spag-Om™?
In a word, no.
This was not very nice. I feel the same way about the Spag-Om™ as I do about chocolate cheesecake. Each of the components is lovely, delicious yummy.
On their own.
But mix them together and you open a minor circle of hell. The Bolognese totally overpowered the omelette. If I was going to wrap my spaghetti Bolognese in something think I would have preferred a tortilla or other sort of wrap that you could toast until the bread got crunchy…maybe add a bit of garlic butter…happy days!
All is not lost though. I think there is something here. I feel a less meat-heavy sauce than Bolognese may be a better option for the future of the Spag-Om™, I have some pesto in my freezer. Maybe next Fridge, Freezer pantry week will see the launch of Spag-Om™2 Electric Booglaoo aka The Pesty Spag-Om™
No, this is not one of Agatha Christie’s little known cases but true-life kitchen drama. Do you think there is such a thing as Covid brain? Because I feel I have become increasingly scatty over the last few…how long have we been in lockdown now? Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t matter how long because we have just gone back into it for another SIX weeks. 😕 For the love of God, people of Melbourne stay TF away from each other. Most of you aren’t even that attractive, why anyone in their right mind would want to get in your personal space is beyond me!
Ok. Rant over. Deep breaths and let’s talk about Vegetarian Scotch Eggs. And explosions.
Oh, these were so good!! The idea from them came from me making Diana Henry’s Baby Pumpkins with mixed mushrooms, leeks, grains. This was also totally delicious and I can heartily recommend making it!
But, after making this, I had a lot of the stuffing mix left. This is no disrespect to Diana. I’m sure had I wanted to stuff 8 eight baby pumpkins her quantities would have been just fine. I was cooking for one. There are usually only a certain amount of times you can divide a recipe before becoming nonsensical. You can generally halve quantities. Sometimes quarter them to no ill effect. Trying to cook to an eighth of a recipe makes no sense. So I guesstimated what I would need for one pumpkin which left me with a lot of leftover filling. The filling was delicious so there was no way I was going to waste it but what to do with it?
My first thought was arancini. But why stop at arancini when you can also put an egg in it? And thus the ideal of my vegetarian scotch egg was born. I popped an egg onto boil, intending to have the perfect four minute boiled egg in the centre of my scotchie. Then went back to work. So, about half an hour later I was drawn out of some intense concentration on a particularly fascinating spreadsheet by what sounded like a bomb going off in my kitchen. First, there was a massive bang, very closely followed by something hitting the window so hard I’m surprised the glass didn’t shatter. The water had dried out in the pan so much that the egg had actually exploded!!!! There was egg shrapnel all over my kitchen. It was like eggmageddon in there!
Like this but on the stove:
Vegetarian Scotch Eggs Take Two
You know how when people who can’t cook say I can’t even boil an egg? So, after the first egg EXPLODED, and I’d cleaned the kitchen and taken a few sedatives because the goddamn thing sounded like a bomb and my heart was pounding like a jackhammer it was time for egg number 2.
On the positive side…this one didn’t explode.
But I did kind of wander off mid-cook to take a call and lost track of egg time. I could tell while peeling it that it was hard-boiled and not the beautiful runny yolk I wanted. But I wrapped it in the mushroom, leek and barley filling regardless. This is the year of not wasting anything remember.
Sure we lost an egg in some explosive collateral damage but you know …I blame Covid for that. I have no rationale for that blame. It’s fucking everything else up so it can also take the blame for my exploding egg. And you know if I hadn’t been working from home and been distracted from cooking it by…errmmmm…work…
Let’s swiftly move away from that one.
Egg 2 turned out pretty delish even though hard-boiled.
Vegetarian Scotch Eggs Take Three
I had a little of the mushroom filling leftover after wapping egg 2. Third-time lucky right? Right! This time I did not take my eyes off that pan for the entire four minutes. I barely blinked. And voila the perfect 4-minute egg as per the pictures above and below
Because it was still so soft it was a little harder to wrap in the filling than the hard-boiled egg. I was terrified I would press too hard and cause the yolk to ooze out before I could get it crumbed and fried.
It’s a bit hard to give you a recipe for this because it was based on the leftovers from the Diana Henry recipe which is here:
You need to judge how many eggs your leftover filling wil cover. To crumb and cook the Scotch Eggs, see my recipe for Pakistani Scotch Eggs. To get your eggs the way you want them, see below:
In lieu of a proper recipe this week, here is a little list of what is currently floating my boat.
Watching
Crazy Delicious – an amazing cooking show on Netflix. Think Heston done by home cooks, a magical ingredient garden, a delightful host in Jayde Adams, oh and Heston is one of the judges!
Dead Pixels – another British show, this time a comedy about the lives of three people obsessed with a video game.
Searching For Sugarman – this was our most recent film club choice. It’s so touching and warm-hearted and as an added bonus, the sounds track is awesome! There has not been a DAY since I watched it when I have not listened to Rodriguez’s Cold Fact at least once!
Reading
I just finished reading “One of Us is Next” which is Karen McManus’ follow up to “One of Us is Lying”. I didn’t love it as much as the first book but it was still a good fun read.
Podding
My current fave is Season 4 of Slow Burn by Slate. I loved Season 1 & 2 of this which covered Watergate and The Clintons respectively. I have not listened to S3 which is about Biggie and Tupac yet but I am going to start it in the next few days. Season 4 is about David Duke who is a total dick a white supremacist politician from Louisiana, and formerly a grand wizard poobah double dragon something from the KuKluxKlan. AKA a total f**king dick..
Here’s Topher Grace brilliantly playing him in Black Klansman.
Please send me your recommendations for books, tv, pods, films, music something, anything to keep me entertained over the next few weeks!
Life Update
Just to make us all feel a little bit better about the state of the world, here is a picture of Holly being adorable. This little dog has absolutely captured our hearts in the last 6 months. She has gone from a timid little thing who was scared of everything to a cheeky little girl who is confident and happy in her life. Being able to give such a lovely girl, who has had such a terrible life, a loving home for the last chapters of her life is the best thing we have done for a long time!
If anyone is thinking about adopting an older dog or a dog rescued from medical research please reach out. I am happy to share our experiences.
Have a great week everyone! Have fun, stay safe, and please, send me your recommendations for books, films, podcasts, tv, etc!
Welcome to the third chapter of Dining with the Dame. If you haven’t read chapters one and two, this is a series about the food found in the novels of Agatha Christie. Murder on the Links is the third Christie novel, published in 1923. This one, let me tell you had me worried. There are plenty of mentions of dejeuners (it is set mostly in France) but no actual food until towards the very end when finally, Poirot and Hastings sit down to “an excellent omelette”. Thank goodness! My back up, given the proximity of a golf course, was going to be a Golf Pie. I would totally eat it but I think it may be a little too basic B for Poirot! Luckily I was able to choose an Omelette Berrichonne as a more classy alternative!
Murder on the Links – The Plot
After meeting a charming girl on a train from Paris to Calais, Hastings returns to London eager to tell Poirot about the love of his life but Poirot is having none of it. He is bored and irritated by his current cases. He then reads a letter from Paul Renauld imploring him to come to France as soon as poss. They arrive at Merlinville to find Renauld has been murdered on the golf course next to his home by masked men who took him from his home leaving his wife tied up in the house.
There is:
a sexy neighbour and her mother, possibly the mistress of the dead man
a disinherited son
shonky South American business dealings
rivalry between Poirot and the French Inspector Giraud
a crime from the past
another dead body found in the shed and
Hastings’ romance with Dulcie Duveen who will go on to become his wife
There is no shortage of action in this one! I whizzed through it in a couple of days. I am really enjoying these reads!
The Covers
This has become one of my favourite parts of this series. I love seeing how the covers have changed over time. Here is a selection of them and there is not a dud in the bunch. Well, maybe the one in the bottom left corner but all the rest are crackers!
I love the top row second from the left and second from the right which features a Magritte style man with a goofball head. And of course the second from the right on the bottom row with its pulp fiction cover!
Do you have a favourite?
The Recipe
“Finally…we set out for the town. It was past our usual hour of dining, and we were both famished. The first restaurant we came to assuaged the pangs of hunger with an excellent omelette, and an equally excellent entrecote to follow”
Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
The book did not give much away in terms of what kind of omelette the excellent omelette was so I had to improvise. I turned to the expert, Elizabeth David. And also followed her example by pairing my omelette with a glass of wine!
I used David’s recipe for an Omelette Berrichonne because I had a leek in the fridge and mint in the garden!
Here are some suggestions on how to make the perfect omelette. And here are Elizabeth David’s additions for the Omelette Berrichonne.
I was a little bit unsure about the mint here but it worked really well! Delicious!
The next read is The Man in the Brown Suit. I am already about half way through as it is another page turner…or whatever the ebook version of a page turner is!
