In my attempts to spend less yet still eat regally I’ve been cooking up a lot of eggs for dinner. For me, a fried egg is a delivery vehicle for the most perfect sauce imaginable: the barely set egg yolk. A saucier could tinker for years without improving upon it, and they’re be no point to all that work, as it takes two minutes to fry an egg then poke the yolk to annoint whatever lies beneath.
So there was really only one way to approach December’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, and that was through an egg carton. This month it is hosted by El Bloggo Torcido and the theme is breakfast foods, and the challenge is to pair a red or white still wine with something you would eat at breakfast. I chose a Côtes du Rhône Villages 2006 from Domaine de Maran to pair with eggs and sauteed spinach and mushrooms. The vegetables were seasoned with garlic and cumin, then I cracked the eggs on top of them and put them in the broiler. The idea was to use the spice in the cumin to echo the spicy notes in the Rhône wine and have the rich egg yolk float above it all.
The Domaine de Maryran is a textbook Côtes du Rhône Villages. It showed pepper, garrigue and red fruit on the nose, and was herbal and spicy on the palate with a nice peppery finish. It has a perfect balance among tannin, fruit and acid, and is really nice for a frigid Wednesday. Crucially the acid lightened things up, as a heavy wine would overpower the egg and vegetables.
The eggs, however, were a miss. I let the pan sit under the broiler for a beat too long. The eggs overcooked and the dish was dry. What this meal needed was sauce – hollandaise, bechemel, raspberry jam, something to sop up with the paprika-spiked potatoes I served with it. The only bright spot is that the cumin did work nicely with the wine, and the dryness of the dish was an incentive to drink more of it. A week or two ago I made a “flat omlette” with chard from Lulu’s Provencal Table; it was garlicky and delicious, and despite its lack of runny yolk it would be a better match with my wine.
hi Molly – Even though the dish didn’t work out as planned, I do think I have to try it sometime soon! I don’t often think of having eggs that way. One thing – might it have been better to finish the egg on the burner after the saute was done? Maybe just putting a lid on the pan for a moment on low heat? That would be my first inclination to try, but perhaps that would make the saute too soggy. Something to try anyway.
Thanks for taking part in WBW!