Brussels sprouts hash with eggs and sage

Brussels sprouts yields are down in the UK this year, with a threat of needing to import so that the Christmas-celebrating population can buy the vegetable that no one likes, but someone would miss if they skipped.

Usually just (over)boiled, and served with butter, maybe with perfunctory additions of chestnuts and pancetta, it’s unsurprising that there’s little demand for sprouts outside of late December. It’s a shame, though, as their natural sweetness and crunch lends both to serving them raw and finely sliced in a salad, or keeping the slices equally thin and applying heat and seasoning to get them caramelised, even a bit charred.

David Chang (he of Momofuku) has a recipe for pan-fried sprouts doused in a punchy, fish sauce and chilli-laced dressing, which sounds like a great match for grilled fish or chicken. But for now, I’m stuck on this hash, which I’ve happily eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I’d imagine bacon and/or bacon fat would work quite well here. Goose or duck fat, which I sometimes have on hand, adds a nice savoury note. As for cooking the eggs, you could also poach them separately and place them on top of the hash. The only absolutes: slice thinly, season well and don’t stint on the sage.

Brussels sprouts hash with eggs and sage

Adapted from Serious Eats

Serves 2 for a hearty breakfast (scale up for lunch or dinner)

Total time: 20-25 minutes; Active time: 10-12 minutes

250g Brussels sprouts

1 small banana shallot (or part of an onion)

6 sage leaves

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 eggs

Parmesan

Trim and finely slice sprouts into thin shreds. Dice shallots and half of the sage leaves.

Turn on the grill (broiler) to a medium heat.

Heat olive oil in a large, oven-proof skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add remaining sage leaves and cook, stirring occasionally, until leaves are crisp, about 1 minute. Transfer to a paper towel.

Add the sprouts and shallots to the pan. Season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the shallots are fully softened, and the sprouts have turned bright green, then begin to caramelise and lightly catch, 7 or 8 minutes

Create wells in the vegetable mixture and break in the eggs. Turn down fully, cover with a lid, plate or board and cook for a few minutes.

Place the pan under the grill, cooking until the eggs are just set. Season again, grate over parmesan to taste and garnish with fried sage leaves.

Black beans, eggs and salsa

Along with a whole range of dishes which used multiple parts of a pig, the 90s-era Cuban diners on the Upper Upper West Side of Manhattan did potent cafes con leche and plates of scrambled eggs and black beans which were big enough to make the next meal redundant. As well as being exotic and cheap, I was told by those with experience of such things that food like this was also very good for hangovers.

For the bright young things of Brixton, who seem to suffer with the same affliction on weekend mornings, the neighbourhood’s multiple Columbian cafes—which do a comparable line in vast servings of assorted meats, eggs and beans, washed down with lots of caffeine—appear to fill a useful niche. But even for those of us whose closest experience of a late-night party is the one that takes place far too often in the apartment upstairs, beans and eggs—minus the mixed meats—is also a popular weekend meal, easy, tasty and admirably inexpensive.

Canned black beans, a rare commodity in much of the country, can be bought in any of the dozens of the small Caribbean grocers nearby. Cooked down with onion, garlic, cumin, fresh coriander and a spoonful of chipotle en adobo (still not locally available; Brixton’s Latino population is probably the largest in inner London, but it’s largely Ecuadoran, Columbian and Venezuelan rather than Mexican), they make a fudgy, mellow partner for eggs of any variety. We’ve scrambled the eggs and used the two to fill leftover corn tortillas. Though my own fried eggs are variable at best, I think that a well-made one plopped on the beans provides nice textural contrast.

Today we played with an idea from another egg dish, shakshouka, where eggs are part-poached, part-baked in a thick sauce of tomato and pepper. We cooked the beans in a wide frying pan, leaving a bit of liquid, then made indentations for the eggs. The pan was covered, and the eggs left to half-set. We finished it all with a quick grilled salsa, made from some cherry tomatoes that improbably appeared at the farmer’s market. The result was somehow far better than the sum of its (simple) parts—and far too good for those neighbours.

No formal recipe needed, but a few notes:

• I’ve found that cooking the beans on a low heat in a frying pan—rather than a saucepan—allows them to soften slightly without turning into mush. I use a good splash of water and simmer them for 10-20 minutes.
• Toasting and grinding whole cumin seeds may seem unnecessary in such a simple recipe, but it makes a real difference to the flavour.
• A bay leaf makes a nice addition to the beans.
• Orangette has a good grilled salsa recipe.

Les Meilleurs Legumes du Paris (The Best Vegetables in Paris)

Sometimes I get a bit tired of visitors to Paris waxing rhapsodic about the fruits and vegetables found in the city’s markets. True, at nearly every one (and there are upwards of 75 held each week), good—even spectacular produce—is easy to find. And there’s little doubt that even the most rumpled vendors often possess a decorator’s gift for arrangement. Excepting such seasonal specialities as white asparagus or morels, prices are often very low too.

What can be disappointing is the conformity. Even the appealingly dirt-speckled carrots at my favourite stand are bought wholesale from the Rungis market, just like their counterparts all over town. And while heritage varietals of tomatoes and potatoes have become increasingly commonplace at British and American farmers’ markets, the supply system for Paris’ markets ensures high standards but (relatively limited) selection. Only two markets—both organic and high-end—have from-the-farm producers, known as “maraichers” or “producteurs.”

Perhaps Parisians get their fill of field-to-table food during their long summer holidays in the countryside. Or maybe, despite the obvious discernment of many market customers, they don’t attach the same importance as their food-conscious Anglophone counterparts to cutting out the middleman, or to meeting the person who harvested their food. It could even be—and here I tread very carefully into the realm of total bullshit—that contemporary French identity has retained some kind of cultural connection with the land (terroir), thus obviating the necessity of “reclaiming” it through a middle-class affectation for expensive, wormy apples.

I suspect that Rungis, the heir to the historic central market at Les Halles, will continue to be the “stomach of Paris” for many years to come. But Joël Thiébault’s produce, grown just 7 kilometres from the Eiffel Tower and sold weekly to some of the city’s best restaurants, has developed the same kind of cult status as Anne-Marie Cantin’s unpasteurised cheese, or Hugo Desnoyer’s meat. And in a city like Paris, that’s not faint praise.

A third-generation farmer, Thiébault reputedly cultivates up to 1500 varieties of vegetables and herbs (a bit of fruit is grown in high summer). About 100 of them are sold at his weekly market stand in the tony 16th arrondissment. Arriving mid-morning this past Saturday my choices including flowering chives, five varieties of carrots and three of beets, heaps of compact lettuces and herbs which I could not identify by sight or smell. Prices are curiously low. At 70 centimes apiece, salads cost no more than the half-rotten ones sold at the far end of my market; choosing with care, it’s possible to assemble a week’s worth of vegetables for about 10 euros.

It was only by exercising extreme restraint that I managed to come home with just two varieties of herbs, a head of lettuce, bunches of golf ball-sized new onions and radishes, waxy salad potatoes, a multicolour array of carrots and an enormous candy-striped beet. In the past 36 hours, the carrots and radishes have been eaten as crudités, with the remainder of the carrots braised with some of the onions and herbs. More of the herbs were chopped into an egg salad, and the lettuce, tossed with a simple vinaigrette, anchored a oozing disk of milky goats cheese.

I have some work to do in perfecting the salad du chevre chaud, but the other dishes—while both exceptionally simple—are ready to be shared. And while great produce will make these simple preparations shine, a trip to Paris is not required. (Though it may be for some of Cantin’s legendary unpasteurised cheese.)

Herbed Egg Salad (adapted from Amanda Hesser)

In this recipe from her first book, The Cook and the Gardener, Hesser deconstructs the classic egg salad, serving it over greens dressed with heavy cream, mustard, tarragon, chervil and chives. I put the dish back together again, substituting good store-bought mayonnaise for the cream, omitting the mustard (which appears in small quantities in French mayonnaise) and using good quantities of fresh chervil and thyme. Served slightly warm, alongside a hunk of coarse bread and some peppery radishes, it was both rich and sprightly.

Total time 15 minutes; Active time 5 minutes
Serves 2

4 eggs
1 tablespoon or more good mayonnaise
At least 5 healthy sprigs chervil
1-2 sprigs fresh, leafy thyme (don’t use it if it has begun to dry out or become gritty)

Boil the eggs until they are moulleux (creamy in the centre, but no longer oozing). Chop the herbs finely. Peel the eggs and crush coarsely, mixing through the mayonnaise. Add the herbs and season well with salt and pepper.

Braised Young Carrots and Onions (adapted from Mark Bittman)

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman is currently spending a few months here in Paris. Last week he wrote about braising some carrots purchased at his local market with shallots, tarragon and a bit of butter. It was, he concluded, “an amazing dish, almost but not quite too sweet, simple, easy, and honest.” I swapped the shallots for new onions and the tarragon for chervil (which subtly echoes tarragon’s aniseed notes). Since I had some mild, homemade chicken stock, I used that instead of water.

Bittman’s original post didn’t include a precise recipe. Saturday night I made the dish just for myself and drank wine instead of watching the clock. So please take quantities and timing as approximate only. But while I like the vegetables soft, the one really important thing is to get the liquid to reduce into a sweet glaze.

Total time: 45 minutes; Active time: 10 minutes

Serves 2

Tasty carrots, enough to feed two amply
About 2/3 the quantity of new onions
A generous sprinkling of chervil
1 tbsp of butter
A few tablespoons of gentle stock (or water)

Cut the carrots into bite-sized batons. If any of the onions are bigger than a golf ball, cut them in half. Place the vegetables in a heavy-bottomed pot or lidded sauté pan, add the butter and a bit of liquid. If you’d like, include some of the chervil now. Season, cover and cook on a gentle heat, checking liquid levels occasionally, until the vegetables are soft (particularly the onions), but not falling apart. If needed, you can add extra liquid in very small quantities. If there is extra stock in the pan at the end of cooking, reduce it for several minutes on a medium heat, or until the vegetables are lightly glazed. Adjust seasoning, add the reserved chervil and serve warm, perhaps alongside roasted chicken.

Ouefs en Cocotte

My fairy godmother at the office—always ready with a sympathetic ear and able to decipher official documents from the gas company—has also looked kindly upon me when it comes to my cooking. Having patiently listened to my oven woes, and having decided to upgrade her own oven, she has donated her old one to Chez Petit Pois. The oven’s heating control isn’t perfect. Things tend to brown quickly on top—great when roasting chicken, as the skin goes gorgeously bronze and crispy, but less desirable when baking cookies. But it's reliable enough to allow me to revisit whole categories of food—dessert, roasts, baked pasta dishes, gratins—and to flip to cookbook sections whose perfectly clean pages make it clear that they have never been used in nearly two years of living in Paris.

The first thing I intended to make was a gratin, and I duly went out to buy an appropriate dish. Encountering Saturday afternoon crowds and what seemed like surprising high prices for a pretty anodyne item, I decided instead to buy two individual-size white china cocottes. Back home, I poured a glass of vermouth*, unpacked my purchase and plotted how to press it into service.

The answer came from a dish of slow-cooked onions, left over, as I remember, from a steak dinner some days earlier. I turned on the oven, spooned some of the onions into the dish, and broke an egg over the top, and covered both with a coarse grating of fresh gruyere** and some black pepper.

After ten minutes in the oven, the onions were warm and aromatic and the egg on the cusp of firm, with the gruyere forming a lacy, golden crown over the top. It was so good that I forgot about the salad and popped another one in the oven instead.

Ouefs en cocotte

This formula can be adapted easily to what’s in the fridge. In place of the onions, I’ve used well-drained, steamed spinach, sautéed mushrooms, tomato confit and, on a night when the fridge was particularly bare, a small dollop of good tapenade. Some diced meat (perhaps cooked or cured ham) or smoked fish could certainly be added to the bottom layer, while any cheese which melts well and isn’t overly assertive could be substituted for the gruyere. To start, I’d suggest taleggio, fontina, a creamy, rindless goats cheese and comte.

One final note: these temperature and cooking recommendations may well apply only to my own oven. To start, I’d stick with the former and check after 8 minutes, jiggling to see how liquid the egg is.

Total time: However long it takes to preheat the oven, plus another ten minutes

Makes a light dinner for one with some bread and salad. You can prepare this for more people by using individual cocottes or by adjusting the cooking time and using a larger dish.

2 tablespoons slow-cooked onion
1 large free-range egg
Somewhere between a large pinch and a small handful of freshly-grated gruyere
Special equipment: an ovenproof dish between 3 and 4 inches in diameter and 1 ½ and 2 inches tall

Preheat the oven to 175C. Place the onions at the base of the dish and crack the egg on top. Sprinkle the gruyere over both and finish with some black pepper.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, depending on how runny you like the egg. If the cheese has not browned and swelled sufficiently, put under the grill for not more than 30 seconds.


* I imagine most people only keep dry white vermouth around to make martinis. But not only does it last for ages without degrading—making it extremely useful to stow in the fridge for adding to braises, soups and the like—but the better ones are also excellent as a solo aperitif. Of the commonly-available brands I particularly like Noilly Prat, which is oak-aged and contains an appealing complex blend of herbs. And yes, I am drinking some now.

** Even in France, there is a huge difference between the pre-grated stuff that most people throw in their baskets at the supermarket, and a well-aged specimen bought from a good cheesemonger. The former is bland and sawdusty, the latter nutty, almost treacly in bits, with some residual moisture even when grated.


Finally, I've written this for La Fête du Fromage. You can find the write-up after the 15th of December at Chez Loulou.

Good, Ugly Supper

Consider yourself lucky that I don't have a camera handy. Piperade, a garlicky Basque speciality of stewed peppers, onions and tomatoes, into which eggs are lightly scrambled, is homely at best. Poaching or baking the eggs might limit the unattractive colour bleed, and a generous hand with the parsley could distract the eye, but piperade's sheer ugliness is hard to disguise.

No matter. This might not be dress-up and go-out food, or even set-the-table-for-dinner food, but it makes an undeniably moreish supper. The traditional accompaniment is salty, silky Bayonne ham, France's answer to the more famous Spanish serrano and Italian parma. But I had my fill of jamon with a bowl of this soup, so I added a bit of extra salt and proceeded without.

I used fresh tomatoes--a variety available here called Marmot, which look like little bean-bag chairs--and bell peppers; substituting good-quality tinned tomatoes and some jarred, roasted peppers would produce a deeper, rounder flavour. For a bit of heat and complexity in my version, I put in a pinch of Spanish smoked paprika; in southwest France, this would most likely be piment d'espelette, also known as ezpeletako biperra. Tabasco could even be used, though I'm generally of the opinion that it only belongs in Bloody Marys.

The ham might be optional, even some of the garlic, if you're sensitive about such things, but I wouldn't sit down without a big piece of crusty bread and a juice glass full of simple, robust wine. Oh, and finally, I've written this for Eat the Right Stuff's vegetarian blogging event. So check it out, for recipes that are far more inventive--and attractive--than mine.

I worked off a recipe from Marlena Spieler's Vegetarian Bistro, which differed in calling for red and green peppers (I forgot to buy the latter), marjoram and cayenne. Since her version made enough for six, I'm giving a scaled-down version with slightly different instructions.

Piperade
Serves 2
Total time 30-35 minutes Active time 15 minutes
2 smallish onions
2 bell peppers
vine-ripened tomatoes, equivalent to about 1 1/2 cups chopped*
1-2 cloves of garlic
3 medium eggs (adjust based on the number of people eating, and the desired ratio of egg to sauce), not fridge-cold
smoked paprika or an equivalent
olive oil

Thinly slice onions. In a medium-sized, deep frying pan or skillet, heat enough olive oil to just coat the surface and add the onions. Season and allow to soften for about 10 minutes on a moderate heat. Coarsely slice the peppers and chop the tomatoes. First add the peppers, allowing these to cook for at least 10 minutes, or until they become almost silky. Now add the chopped tomatoes, giving about 5 minutes for them to soften, meld and give up their juice. (Allow a bit more time for flavour blending if you are using tinned tomatoes.) Slice or chop the garlic and add, along with the paprika. Cook for a few more minutes, adjusting the heat if necesary, until you have a dryish but coherent sauce. Turn the heat down to low. In a bowl, crack the eggs and whisk lightly with a fork.** Spoon in a bit of the sauce, then add the egg mixture to the pan, stirring gently to combine. Continue to stir until the eggs are just cooked through, then remove immediately from both the heat and the pan.


* If the only fresh tomatoes you can find look pale or cotton-woolly, substitute a can of plum tomatoes with most of the juice drained.
** At this stage you could also poach the eggs, though I would advise that you look for advice on how to do this elsewhere.