In France eggs are not relegated to the breakfast table; instead they are treated with the culinary seriousness they deserve appearing on both bistro and three star restaurant menus. Oeufs Mayo (hard boiled eggs toped with lots of freshly made mayonnaise) is a nice entree. So are Oeufs Meurette (poached eggs in red wine sauce). One bistro even serves BSK’s childhood favorite: Eggs and Soldiers. The dish consists of a soft boiled egg with buttered spears of a baguette. Naturally, omelettes are prominent. HG loves a bistro mushroom omelette, brown and crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. (The French descriptive word for this is baveuse which literally means “oozing.”) A baveuse omelette accompanied by pomme frites, red wine and good bread (perhaps a bit of salad) makes an ideal light, but hearty lunch. (The comic genius, Mel Brooks, discusses a baveuse onion and tomato omelette in this month’s Bon Appetit Magazine). HG also likes fried eggs and bacon tucked into a Norman galette, a crisp edged buckwheat crepe. Back home in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, HG likes a summer egg salad (heavy on the mayo) sandwich on whole wheat toast with a glass of cold lemonade.
I want to eat all the eggs you mentioned.
One Sunday, after walking in a park on the outskirts of Paris (outskirts is probably a term connected to what Victorian women wore?), I found a café where I ordered a wild mushroom omelet. In it was a symphony of mushrooms, indeed wild, and it was buttery, parsleyed, and baveuse. It represented all the love and precision of a café kitchen, and no dish ever bettered that one, before or since.
Peter: With your usual prose precision you have chosen the mot juste. “Outskirts” precisely describes the area which is the edge of a city but not a suburb.
I had no idea I was so precise. Like you, HG, I’m just never far from thinking about not only outskirts but in skirts…..
Does anyone remember when women were called “skirts”?