Around My French Table (27 page)

A
SPARAGUS AND EGGS COULDN'T BE
a better pair if they grew out in the field on the same branch. Both are odd flavors in their own ways—neither really resembles any other food—but they come together in classics like asparagus with creamy, eggy hollandaise sauce and asparagus mimosa, in which the spears are showered with sieved hard-boiled egg that resembles the flower. And here they are together again in a dish in which the asparagus are dressed with a sherry vinegar-nut oil vinaigrette, set on a mound of mesclun, and topped with bacon bits, chopped toasted nuts, and a wonderfully soft-boiled egg with a yolk that's runny enough to become a second sauce.

I love the way the eggs for this salad are cooked—they're boiled until they're just barely set, then peeled and rewarmed by rolling them around in bacon fat. I first had eggs cooked like this at Christian Constant's café in Paris and thought that perhaps they were made using the magical immersion circulator. I was delighted to find that I could get a kissing cousin to the eggs using an ordinary saucepan on my ordinary stove.

You can swap these eggs for Ruffly Poached Eggs (
[>]
) or for old-school Poached Eggs (
[>]
). Any of these will give you what this salad wants: egg flavor, a soft texture, and a runny yolk to mix with the dressing.

TO MAKE THE VINAIGRETTE:
Put all the ingredients in a small jar, cover, and shake to blend; or use a small bowl and a whisk. If you've used the mustard, the dressing will be fairly well blended; if not, it will blend, then separate—either way, it's fine. Set aside, and shake (or whisk) again before using.
(You can make the vinaigrette up to a week in advance and keep it in the fridge.)

TO MAKE THE SALAD:
Bring a medium saucepan of heavily salted water to a boil. One by one, put the cold eggs on a spoon and slowly and gently lower them into the water (saying a little don't-let-my-egg-break prayer on the way down). Allow the eggs to boil for exactly 6 minutes, then remove the pan from
the heat, lift the eggs into a strainer, and run them under cold water to cool them quickly. Fill the pan with cold water and leave the eggs in the water until needed.

Bring a large skillet of salted water to a boil. Slip the asparagus into the pan and cook for 4 minutes, or until you can pierce the spears with the tip of a paring knife. The asparagus should be cooked through but not at all mushy. Carefully transfer the spears to a plate lined with a double thickness of paper towels and pat them dry.

Pour out the salted water, rinse the skillet to cool it, dry it, and lay the strips of bacon in the pan. Cook over medium-low heat, turning as needed, until the bacon is golden and crisp on both sides. Remove the strips and put them between a double thickness of paper towels; when the bacon is cool, cut it into narrow strips or chop it into bits. Leave 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat in the skillet—you'll use it for the eggs.

When you're ready to serve, very, very carefully shell the eggs. It's a fussy job, because the eggs are so soft, and you might not get the shells off cleanly, but unless you break into the yolks, it will be fine. Rinse the eggs to remove any bits of shell and pat them dry. Warm the bacon fat over medium heat.

While the bacon fat is heating, assemble the salad. You can put it together on a platter or arrange it on individual plates. Either way, season the mesclun with salt and pepper, then toss it with about three-quarters of the vinaigrette, and arrange in the center of the platter or your plates. Toss the asparagus with the remaining vinaigrette (I do this with my fingers) and lay the spears over the greens.

Now return to the skillet. When the fat is warm, gingerly slip the eggs into the skillet and roll them around in the fat for a minute or two, just to coat them with fat, heat them slightly, and color them a little.

Lift the eggs out of the skillet and place them on top of the asparagus. Scatter the bacon and toasted nuts over the salad and serve immediately.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

SERVING
A great starter for a spring or summer dinner, the salad can also be the main event at a warm-weather lunch. If you serve it for lunch, think about serving a hunk of cheese (or a small platter of cheeses) as well. Nutty cheeses like Comté, Gruyère, or Parmesan go particularly well with asparagus.

STORING
You can make the vinaigrette days ahead, and it's okay to cook the asparagus, bacon, and eggs a couple of hours ahead, but the eggs' final swirl-around in the bacon fat and the salad's assembly need to be last minute.

BONNE IDÉE
Nut-Coated Eggs.
To add just a touch more sophistication to this dish, warm the eggs in the fat in the skillet, and when they're nicely coated with fat, sprinkle about 2 tablespoons finely chopped nuts over them. Keep turning the eggs until the nuts are browned and the eggs are coated. Or, for a change, replace the bacon fat with butter. Cook the butter over gentle heat until it browns lightly, then coat the eggs and add the nuts.

T
HERE WAS A MOMENT IN FRANCE
when everything that could possibly be deconstructed was: Caesar salad was served with its component parts arranged on a plate; ditto the club sandwich; and even regional treasures such as piperade (
[>]
), the stewed pepper mix from the Pays Basque, were being taken apart piece by piece and, like Humpty Dumpty not put back together again. For this dish, I decided to deconstruct a sandwich and saladize it too.

This started out as a BLT
destructurise,
made up of bits of crisp bacon, arugula (because it has more flavor than lettuce), and tomatoes, both fresh and sun-dried, all tossed in a vinaigrette and sprinkled with croutons salvaged from stale country bread. At the last minute, thinking that my friends might need something more substantial for lunch, I added the hard-boiled eggs and topped them with a spot of mayonnaise. Adding the eggs made the salad instantly recognizable to my French friends—they looked at the dish and decided that it was deconstructed
oeufs mayonnaise.
If only it were always so easy to cross the cultural divide.

Lay the bacon strips in a large skillet and cook them over medium heat, turning occasionally, until the fat is rendered and the bacon is crisp on both sides. Transfer the bacon to a plate lined with a double thickness of paper towels and pat off the excess fat (set the skillet aside). When the bacon is cool, coarsely chop it.

Discard all but about 2 tablespoons fat from the skillet and put the skillet over medium-high heat. When the fat is hot, toss in the bread cubes and cook, stirring, until they're golden. Remove the croutons with a slotted spoon and drain them on paper towels.

To construct the deconstructed salad, put the arugula and sun-dried tomatoes in a large salad bowl—I like to use one that's wide and shallow—and toss with most of the vinaigrette. Turn the fresh tomatoes around with some or all of the remaining vinaigrette (in other words, dress to taste) and strew them over the greens, along with the chopped bacon. Season the salad with salt and pepper. Arrange the eggs, yolks up, over the greens, then give each egg a dab of mayonnaise and a shower of salt and pepper. Scatter over the croutons.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

SERVING
I like to bring the arranged salad to the table and toss it there. And, although it already has bread, I still serve bread—it makes it more of a meal, particularly in France.

STORING
You can cook the bacon and make the croutons a couple of hours ahead, hard-boil the eggs up to a day ahead (keep them in the fridge), and make the vinaigrette days ahead. However, once the ingredients are united, it's time to eat.

A
CRAB SALAD LIKE THIS ONE
, fanciful and confetti-bright, is a perfect start to anything from a luxurious dinner to a picnic. While there are lots of small additions to the salad—teensy cubes of cucumber, red pepper, and chile, minced mint, and very small pieces of Ruby Red grapefruit—the standout flavor is, just as you want it to be, the crab, sweet and briny.

BE PREPARED:
Cut the grapefruit sections a couple of hours, or as many as 6 hours, ahead of time and let them stand between a double layer of paper towels so that the fruit is as dry as possible—a small but crucial step.

Cut the grapefruit crosswise in half and carefully cut out the half-segments, slicing along the membranes to release the fruit. Squeeze the juice from the hollowed-out halves and keep it covered in the refrigerator (discard the rinds). Put a double layer of paper towels on a plate or cutting board and arrange the grapefruit segments on the paper. Cover with another double layer of towels and pat the segments lightly. Discard the paper towels, arrange the fruit on a new layer of towels, and cover again. Let the segments sit for at least 2 hours, or for as long as 6 hours; if the towels are very wet, change them again.

When you're ready to make the salad, drain the crabmeat if necessary, turn it out onto a double thickness of paper towels, and pat it dry. Put it in a bowl and add the cucumber, bell pepper, scallion, and chile, if you're using it.

Cut the grapefruit segments into very small pieces, add them to the bowl, and, using a fork (or your fingers), gently toss the ingredients together. Don't overdo it—you want the crab to stay in largish pieces if possible. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil and 1 tablespoon of the reserved grapefruit juice and season with salt and pepper and, if you'd like, a couple of shakes of Tabasco. Taste the salad and decide what you'd like to add, if anything: I usually add a squirt or two of lemon juice for extra pop, or you may need a little more oil. Just pay attention to the amount of liquid you add—you don't want the salad to be wet. When you've got it just the way you want it, stir in the mint and serve.