French Fridays with Dorie - Lovely and Ruffly Poached Eggs

The French Fridays part of this post is going to be brief because I was too lazy to go to the store for the brioche, wild mushrooms, shallots, cream and herbs required to prepare this week's recipe:  Creamy Mushrooms and Eggs. The recipe calls for poached eggs or Ruffly Poached Eggs. I was intrigued with the technique for the ruffly poached eggs so I decided to give those a test run and create a simple lunch with ingredients on hand. The creamy mushrooms will have to wait for another time...

Toasted English Muffin, Prosciutto and Ruffly Poached Eggs

Achieving the "ruffly look" is a small production - Tear off two pieces of plastic wrap, put one on top of the other, lightly brush the top piece with olive oil, gently press the wrap inside of a tea cup, crack an egg into the plastic wrap-lined tea cup, forage through several drawers in search of kitchen twine, gather up the wrap around the egg, and then tie the pouch with twine. Repeat with each additional egg to be poached. Submerge said pouches in simmering water for 5-6 minutes, remove pouches to counter top, snip off plastic just below twine, unwrap poached eggs, and transfer to waiting English muffin halves, toast, asparagus spears, or salad. Add freshly ground pepper and parsley sprigs and serve.

Egg ruffling tools

I enjoy playing with my food, so this egg poaching technique was fun to try. Dorie shares the method here. The eggs do look elegant with their ruffles and pleats, but Michael Ruhlman's badass egg poaching spoon method also yields lovely eggs, without wrestling plastic wrap and hunting down twine.

Speaking of elegant and lovely, the annual Coronado Flower Show, the largest tented flower show in the nation, took place recently. The home front division competition excites the Coronado community and inspires everyone to spruce up their gardens and beautify the city in preparation for the flower show. Here are some photos from my self-guided tour of the top 25 home fronts. You can see the full album here.

Cheers, and have a great weekend!

- Denise & Trapper

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French Fridays with Dorie is an online cooking group, dedicated to Dorie Greenspan‘s Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours. As members of the group, we have purchased the cookbook and cook along as much as we can. There is a new recipe each week, and we post about that recipe on Friday. We are asked to refrain from posting the actual recipes on our blog. The book is filled with stunning photography, and personal stories about each recipe, which makes it that much more intriguing. I highly recommend adding it to your cookbook collection if you haven't already!