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Tag: eggs

19
May
2020

Omelette Berrichonne – Murder on The Links

categories: Dining With The Dame, Eggs, Omelette

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!

Other Food Mentioned in Murder on The Links

Entrecote

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!

Hope you are having a wonderful week.

Stay safe friends!

09
Mar
2020

Coddled Eggs

categories: Eggs

Don’t coddled eggs sound like precious little eggs that have led very sheltered lives and been thoroughly pampered? In fact, they are regular eggs cooked in a coddler to produce a gorgeous silky soft egg. Coddled eggs are similar to both a poached egg or a soft-boiled egg but, in my mind, better than boiled and easier to make than poached.

I swear poached eggs are my nemesis. I have used:

and have yet to be able to produce a perfectly poached egg.

Coddled eggs to the rescue!

So what are coddled eggs?

I’m glad you asked!

Coddled eggs are eggs that are cooked very gently (in just boiled or even just slightly below boiling water in a vessel, traditionally an egg coddler but there are also plenty of recipes on the internet that use ramekins if you are not in possession of an egg coddler. I bought my egg coddler when I was in England last year but you can find egg coddlers in cookware shops, eBay, Etsy, etc. for not very much money if you are keen to get one. Or, if you are anywhere near Rye in the UK, they were for sale in many of the vintagey shops there.

Coddled eggs make a nice addition to your breakfast repertoire or, if you are a bit of a lazy cook like me, they also make a very nice supper with some asparagus dunkers! The beauty of using an egg coddler is that you can drop your asparagus into the same pan as you are coddling your eggs! 😜

I am working from home a lot more these days (on the upside because I am trying to socialise our new dog, Holly, and on the downside because who wants to be riding the trains 5 days a week with the virus taking hold everywhere!). And, as I have more time at home a coddled egg has become my default breakfast or lunch!. And, let’s be honest here, sometimes it’s breakfast and lunch!

The Recipe and Variations

One of the lovely things about coddled eggs is that whilst you can have them plain or infuse them with all sorts of deliciousness. For instance, I had a plain coddled egg for brekky this morning. This was just the coddled egg, salt, and pepper on a tortilla. I made a fancier version with cream and chives to have with my bacon and tomatoes for a weekend breakfast.

I used the Bon Appetit recipe for coddled eggs as my starting point and have added or subtracted flavourings per my particular want.

Other additions could include:

- Smoked salmon
- Truffles (if you’re feeling fancy!)
- Spinach and feta
- You could try some Tunisian flavours for a shakshuka-esque meal

Or whatever else takes your fancy!

Have a great week and stay safe out there!

06
Jan
2020

Sriracha Deviled Eggs

categories: Devilled Eggs, Eggs, Starters

Happy New Year Everyone!!!! Let’s hope it is wonderful for all of us. And speaking of wonderful – let’s talk deviled eggs! Specifically, let’s talk Sriracha deviled eggs. For Christmas Day, I wanted an appetiser that could stave off hunger pangs while the main meal and sides finished cooking. Ideally, I also wanted something that I could cook the day before so there was one less thing to worry about on the big day. This recipe for Sriracha Deviled Eggs fitted the bill perfectly! Plus, I got to use my gorgeous deviled egg plate!! That’s a definite win-win situation!

I tell you, cooking Christmas lunch was hard work, By the end, my plan looked like one of those walls you see in murder mysteries, with scribbled notes and arrows linking timelines all over the place. At best, timing is my bête noire so trying to ensure 3 appetisers, 4 different kinds of meat, two sides and a dessert all arrived at the table at the right time required a lot of planning and, let’s be truthful, a little bit of luck! Here’s a facsimile of my plan!

So, it was a massive relief that the Sriracha Deviled eggs could be made the day before. And, despite my wonky piping, they looked so pretty on the plate! The recipe I had for these eggs had a garlic breadcrumb topping which, to be honest, I did not like the sound of. They would have also been one more thing that would have needed cooking on what was already a mad schedule. Instead, I topped my eggs with a slice of fried shallot (bought at the Asian grocery), a sliver of red chilli and about a third of a coriander leaf. A sprinkle of smoked paprika and voila, the eggs were done. And the colours not only matched the plate but the red chilli and green coriander were also very festive.

The gorgeous plate was a birthday present from my dear friend Ali a few years ago. I love it but do not use it nearly enough. This year may well become the year of the deviled egg just so I can use it more often!

The eggs went down a treat and were the perfect start to our Christmas festivities. I was, at the time unaware that the great, great granddaddy of the deviled eggs we serve today were served way back in Roman times to the wealthy patricians as a first course called gustatio. (Which is, I guess where we get the word gustation)

Well, if you would like to have a gustatio of your own, here’s the recipe!

A disclaimer on the recipe. Usually, when I clip a recipe I write on the back the details from whence it came so I can give credit where credit is due. This clipping has no reference so maybe someone gave it to me or it might be from before I started blogging and just clipped things because I liked the sound of them! The font of the clipping makes me think it might be from a Delicious magazine but I cannot find a recipe online to confirm or deny. If the recipe seems familiar to anyone, please let me know so I can reference it properly. The eggs are basically that recipe with a few tweaks, the garnishes are my idea.

Sriracha Deviled Eggs

Print Recipe

A delicious appetiser, perfect for a festive celebration

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

For the Eggs!
6 hard boiled eggs, shelled and halved
2 tbsp Sriracha chilli sauce
2 –3 tbsp Mayonnaise
4 Chives, finely chopped
For the Garnish!
Crispy fried shallots
Red Chilli, finely sliced
Coriander leaves
Smoked Paprika / Cayenne Pepper

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Remove the yolks from the eggs with a teaspoon. Tip into a bowl.
Add the Sriracha and mayonnaise and mash until smooth.
Stir through the chives.
If you want to be fancy, put the yolk mixture into a piping bag and pipe the mixture back into the egg halves using a star nozzle.
Otherwise, just spoon the mixture back into the egg halves.
Eitherway, garnish with a slice of crispy fried shallot, a thin slice of red chilli and a small piece of coriander leaf.
Sprinkle with smoked paprika, or if you are feeling brave enough for a triple dose of chilli, some cayenne.

Notes

Please try to use free range eggs for this!

Have a fabulous week!

02
May
2019

Name Plates: Eggs Benedict

categories: Breakfast, Brunch, Classic Recipes, Eggs, Name Plates, United States of America

Hello brunch! Eggs Benedict is one of my favourite brunch dishes. Mind you, I would also eat them for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I’m not that fussy! But today’s project is to uncover the eponymous Benedict,

What Are Eggs Benedict?

Okay, so…given this is such a brunch favourite, I know many of you will already know exactly what Eggs Benedict entails. And all of you are quite welcome to skip to the next section.

For those who are in the dark, Eggs Benedict is a dish typically served at breakfast or brunch which consists of two halves of a toasted English muffin, topped with bacon or ham, a poached egg and Hollandaise Sauce.

Who Was Benedict?

Larousse names Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans as one of the possible birthplaces of Eggs Benedict. And there is certainly an amazing looking Eggs Benny on their website.😍 However, all the other research I have done points to New York as being the birthplace of Eggs Benedict.

Delmonico’s in New York is a contender. A regular customer, one of the Le Grand Benedict family, got bored with the regular breakfast and asked for “poached eggs on toasted English muffins with a thin slice of ham, Hollandaise sauce and a truffle on top” as a more exciting alternative.

In 1967, a letter to the New Yorker said that Commodore E.C.Benedict, a yachtsman and retired banker was the inventor of Eggs Benedict.

My favourite story, however, and so the one we are going to go with, suggests that the recipe was devised by one Lemuel Benedict in 1942 when he strolled into the Waldorf Hotel with a raging hangover and asked for “buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon, and a hooker of hollandaise”.

Instead of looking askance at him and saying in a very stern manner, “We Sir, are a classy establishment and hence not familiar with the practice of measuring our sauces, Hollandaise or otherwise in units of sex workers”, the kitchen complied and Eggs Benedict was born!

Can we just take a step out to talk about how delicious Hollandaise Sauce is?

OMG..it’s the best thing in the world. Sometimes, when I really don’t feel like cooking? I will buy a jar of Hollandaise sauce, heat it up in the microwave and just dip vegetables…asparagus, broccoli, beans, etc right into the jar for my dinner!

And do you also know that it was only very recently that I reaslised Hollandaise is just French for “from Holland”? I mean, it’s totally damn obvious when you think about it but….at the time?

The Recipe

Given it’s likely New York origins, I used the recipe from the New York Times for my classic version of Eggs Benedict.

Some variations are below.

Variations

The interwebs abound with variations of Eggs Benny. You can change the meat:

This Naughty Benny swaps out the ham for mortadella and adds an onion jam.

You can change the base:

This one swaps out the English Muffins for Potato Rosti.

You can combine it with other brunch favorites such as this Benedict BLT.

Or add some Italian Pizzazz with an Eggs Benedict Pizza.

You can also swap out the sauce

For those who like a bit of booze with their Benny, this one has a beer-based sauce.

I guess the only constant is the eggs…

Oops, scratch that. Here’s a vegan version.

A myriad of other versions can be found here

Modern Day Benedict

In my mind, there can only be one:

What’s your favourite version of Eggs Benedict?

And to whom would you dedicate a modern dish of poached eggs, ham and hollandaise sauce on an English Muffin?

Have a wonderful week!

31
Dec
2017

Anne’s Poetical Egg Salad Sandwiches

categories: Books, Eggs, Sandwiches

One of the absolute delights of my childhood was discovering the Anne of Green Gables set of books by Lucy Maud Montgomery. They were my favourite books for years! And to be honest, although I haven’t read one in forever, I still have the entire series and it wouldn’t take much for me to be again drawn into the world of Matthew and Marilla, Diana Barry and Gilbert Blythe and the adorable red-haired, high-spirited feisty girl known as Anne of Green Gables. And that’s Anne with an E and don’t you forget it!

These books taught me so much about the world – about love, about friendship and family, about how it’s okay to be different (and how to embrace that difference). Oh, and how I wasn’t the only person in the world who constantly had to spell their name to people to ensure that they got it right!

So I was overjoyed to find out that there is an Anne of Green Gables Cookbook. And beside myself to be given a free ARC from NetGalley and Race Point Publishing to review! Thank you so much!

First up, this book is gorgeous! The illustrations and the photos are beautiful. And all of the recipes are referenced to the exact place in the books where they occurred..which a pedant like me totally loves!

I choose to make Anne’s Poetical Egg Salad sandwiches. And they were delicious.

OMG…these were so good!

I think sometimes it’s hard when blogging to present something as simple as these sandwiches because…..well…it’s egg salad right and everyone knows how to make that. so why bother? But this is also real food, the kind of food I want to make. Eat. Repeat.

Recipe? Here.

And you can also fancy these up. The version you are looking at has some chives in the mix. It’s great with lettuce in the sandwich. To make it really fancy, a slice of smoked salmon is divine!