ALL ABOUT THE YOLK: RUNNY, RUN, Ru, r…….
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Creamy Mushrooms and Eggs, is egg-cellent, very tasty. It’s egg-actly right for a lingering week-end breakfast, even for a brunch with friends. Or you may go frenchy and make this your dinner appetizer, as Dorie does. I found it egg-tremely filling so I will always serve this as the main event of a meal.
I may live in Colorado but these are not Magic Mushrooms. Promise.
First, I purchased a loaf of challah at my local bakery. Although Dorie suggests baking your own brioche or challah, there is no way, living at 8200 feet, that I’m willing to risk a bread-fail right now. (I’m still swimming upstream after my Cod-and-Spinach Roulade debacle of two weeks ago.) The bread is lightly toasted and serves as the base for this dish.
After putting together a mixture of wild and cultivated mushrooms at Whole Foods, it was quite simple to make the creamy mushroom sauce. Butter. Olive Oil. Shallots. Heavy Cream. Spices. If I’d had my druthers, I would have enjoyed my sauce a bit more runny and will add more cream next time.
Creamy Mushrooms and Eggs
For me, however, this week was all about the poached egg. Not only does Dorie suggest two methods for doing this, Madame Ruffly Poached Egg or the plainer Monsieur Poached Egg, she also explains how to store them for two days in the fridge. Since this dish is à la minute, that’s nice to know. I will admit to leaving the egg in the water for an additional 60 seconds, as she suggested, if we wished the yolk slightly more cooked. Yes, Julia would be horrified.
Today – Thursday, May 2 – would have been Michael’s and my 27th wedding anniversary so it was a good day to lie low, hang out in the kitchen pondering over Greenspan’s poaching methods, and write this Post. I realized it would be twicky, (thank you, Clara) to get through this first year of holidays, birthdays and celebrations without him and this is the last one, thank God.
Although Julia and Dorie love their eggs a tad more runny, Mary does not.
When we celebrated his life last year, at a service here in Aspen, I finally admitted to our friends and family that Michael and I sometimes asked ourselves, “What were we thinking?”
He was a nice Jewish boy, concluding a successful professional career, edging toward retirement. I was a nice Christian girl, editor of the local newspaper, with fire still in my belly and professional mountains to climb. But we worked like crazy and muddled through for almost 27 years. Hooray for us.
When we moved from Aspen to Henderson, Nevada, nine years ago, only Michael realized we were leaving our Colorado home to fight a medical battle we could not hope to win. Sometimes my naivety is a blessing. That’s why returning to Colorado has also been a blessing. I’ve been here only a month but already I’m successfully erasing those tough recollections of our last few years together, exchanging them with happy ones made here. Every Aspen corner and mountain trail holds a hilarious Michael moment. He was that kind of guy. Since one’s Memory Bank can only contain so much, why not load it up with the good times?
Although I suspect Sadness and Grief will always be my Wingmen, I know the only way to honor Michael is to relish and enjoy this Life we made together. When I married him long ago, he opened up doors to Life’s experiences and opportunities that my girls and I could never have known or enjoyed were it not for him. The past 9 1/2 months have been hectic, overloaded with changes. I’m not sure, but I think he would be proud of me. What I am sure about is that he sure as hell wouldn’t have stood for Creamy Mushrooms and Eggs as his anniversary meal.
To see what my colleagues poached up this week, go here. Want to try this delicious recipe. Go here. If only to learn her culinary techniques, I recommend your buying Dorie’s cookbook, Around My French Table.
