Eggs & Gravy!
When you give a chain restaurant a second chance and you’re pleasantly surprised at the updated menu, that it’s ‘OK’, decide to blog about the fact that they have oeufs pochés en meurette on the menu, then see that renowned critic and replacement for AA Gill, Marina O’Loughlin writes about the very same dish in her debut piece for The Sunday Times? THAT!
Though of course this does mean that I must be on trend and of the moment, yes? Well I am going with that.
It’s been a while since I have put keyboard to blog and thought it high time that I start the old lady up again.
Fear not, I have still been trawling restaurants, events, pop ups, cafes, traveled, just haven’t been blogging it, though if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll have an idea of my daily and weekly bimblings.
So back to the eggs & gravy. For years I have been meaning to follow Simon Hopkinson’s recipe for coq au vin, I am a bit of a sucker for recipes that take time, with lots of steps and prep as, mostly it is proven, when you come to eat the dish, every pain staking process is worthwhile. Honestly, give his paella recipe a go.
I have a copy of his book The Good Cook among all the other foodie tomes straining our book case and following his coq au vin recipe, which states at the end…
Note: a good coq au vin tastes infinitely better reheated the next day.
…we know this works for curry, lasagne and few other dishes, so I get this. On the following page is his recipe for poached eggs in coq au vin gravy. Seen it, never eaten it!
Now Simon Hopkinson was not the first person I had tell me about the perfect marriage of eggs and gravy. Whilst interviewing Chef Tony Tobin about his career and background he was positively drooling describing when he was introduced to omelette & gravy by his then mentor Nico Ladenis. It’s simple, it works.
Who, in fact, could be bothered with the labour-intensive nonsense that goes into this redoubtable Burgundian classic? The faff of reducing good red wine with stock, uniformly julienning smoky lardons, peeling tiny onions, then carefully poaching eggs in this heady liquor to be plonked on garlicky croutes?
Marina O’Loughlin
Marina may be right, not having the spare 48 hours at the moment until I can devour a bowl of eggs in molten brown liquor, a quick fix of this peasant dish can be sought at Café Rouge. Yes, indeed!
We stumbled across this new addition on their menu the other night. I’m not a lover of chains but sometimes needs must. We needed a little soak up of some Friday night glasses of wine. I plumped for the oeufs as I didn’t want anything too heavy and partnered them with a side order of green beans, could easily have added dauphinous, which wouldn’t be a bad choice.
OK, the egg wasn’t poached in the gravy which it should have been, but it was pleasant enough for me to think how nice it was to have something alternative on the menu.
Beefy, sticky gravy, oozy yolk and bread. What’s not to like?
Oh, and Marina is right, it’s not a great Instagammable dish but bloomin’ tasty!
