Oeufs en meurette

I seem to have been writing a lot about food lately & yet I haven’t mentioned the item that most epitomises Burgundy for me now – œufs en meurette. This item seemed to appear on menus everywhere & is something I’ve never seen in any other region of France.

So what is it? The common translation that appeared on so many menus was “Eggs poached in (usually red) wine”.

At first we resisted trying it. The idea of eggs poached in red wine, absorbing some of the rich colour of the wine into the white of egg, was a bit off-putting. However, even before we left Dijon, we’d succumbed to trying them.

The version we tried in Dijon was cooked in white Aligote wine. The wine sauce also included bacon pieces & mushrooms. The lightly poached eggs were placed on some toasted bread & coated in this rich, quite liquidy, sauce. It was served in bowls. When you break into the yolks they ooze into the sauce, enriching it yet more.

By the time we’d got to Beaune we’d progressed to trying the red wine version. Even richer than the white.

They were usually served as a starter, though in some places you could get a larger portion as a main course.

I have to confess we were nearly overwhelmed on the last time we had them. It was as a starter, in the classic red wine version. The only problem was you had three eggs each, a bit heavy when you had a further two courses to go.

I've since had a look in my cookery books at home. I've found a couple of versions of the recipe but neither really capture what we had, desptie being written by French writers.

Cheesy

One of the other local specialities our young Frenchman recommended was Epoisses cheese. This time we were able to reply that we had already tried it.

The previous day we had gone over to Epoisses, a nearby village. While there we had lunched at the local auberge. We had both had the pork fillet, in my case with the mustard sauce, but the Fox had had it with the Epoisses (cheese) sauce. He’d thoroughly enjoyed it, as had I with my version.

Afterwards we ventured to look around the castle grounds. (The inside is only open in high summer.) The first thing we learnt was that the box for Epoisses cheese features an image of the castle.

 

The castle

The castle

The school within the castle walls & still used as such

 

The church, once part if a 12th century abbey, seen from the outside walls

The dovecote

 

Inside the dovecote

We came across the cheese once more when we were dining in our hotel in Beaune. We decided to go for the set Burgundy menu, which included “nonette de pain de l’epoisses”. Nonette is sort of gingerbread local to the area. It’s quite different from an English gingerbread loaf which tends to very moist & quite spicy. This gingerbread is quite dry & only very gently spiced, more the sort of thing you make gingerbread men with. Anyhow, a slice of Epoisses cheese was placed on top & then the whole was warmed through – a very tasty cheese course.

A Taste of Mustard

We were scanning the supermarket shelves, trying to decide which bottle of wine to buy. A young man suddenly came up, & offered to help. He was clearly a local & a fellow shopper. We got to talking, in English – he assumed as we were talking to each other in English we wouldn’t be able to speak any French, & it has to be admitted his English was so excellent we didn’t disabuse him.

He was still a student, doing a PhD. He’d spent some time in the USA studying, though now he was in Germany, home in Semur-en-Auxois for a holiday. He clearly loved his home town & region. He recommended a red wine to go with our meal & advised us to open it a while before drinking so it would soften with the airing.

After getting the odd other item, we went to the till to find ourselves stood behind the same young man in the queue. He went on to tell of other specialities of the area which we must try, including Edmond Fallot mustard. He offered to run & get us a jar. We thanked him for his offer but told him no, we were off to Beaune the next day. We could easily look for some while we were there.

So to Beaune with the name of Edmond Fallot in mind. Maybe a small jar would be a fitting momento of our holiday. 

We soon discovered one of the recommended highlights of Beaune was a visit to a local moutarderie (mustard factory). As it was just around the corner from our hotel, we thought we would go & see if it was wheelchair accessible.  Sure enough it turned out to belong to be the Edmond Fallot moutarderie, so we went on the guided tour.

We learnt how to make mustard. We were instructed to taste some mustard seeds & sure enough, they had a nuttiness but no heat. Then we were taught how to make our own mustard. The seeds are ground with the salt & wine/vinegar, & it is only as a result of the chemical reaction between the ingredients that the heat emerges. 

Our teacher showing us how to make mustard

 

We learnt the difference between Dijon mustard & Burgundy mustard. The latter is regulated. All the ingredients have to come from the immediate area. Aligote wine is used to make it. Dijon mustard can be made anywhere & is just a recipe for a style of wine, just as Cheddar cheese can be made throughout the world not necessarily from the Cheddar Gorge area.

Edmond Fallot is the only small independent manufacturer in the area these days. Many, like our young man in the supermarket, regard their mustard as the best. They make a whole range of different flavours of mustards, not just the basic French mustard & whole grain varieties. So we tried the blackcurrant, the tarragon to name a couple. They also made lemon & dill, provençale (red pepper & garlic), walnut, gingerbread & honey, to name but a few. We came away with a couple of pots of Burgundy mustard & lemon & dill.

It was not until we got home & were looking through our photos, that I discovered we’d been past the Edmond Fallot shop in Dijon. I suppose at the time the name meant nothing special to us. Now it does.

In Dijon

Yesterday we went down to our local village pub to discover one of the specials for the day was Mackerel Fillets with Mustard Sauce. I couldn’t help thinking that would have been just the thing to use the lemon & dill mustard for. I don’t expect they did.