fancy french eggs and simple french soup

i am obsessed with all things french right now - especially cooking. i am reading two books about french cooking and i just ordered julia child's famous cookbook
"mastering the art of french cooking."

in honor of one of my childhood heroes - hell, present day hero - i attempted two of julia's recipes recently. (did you know she didn't even start cooking, like at all, until she was 36?! f'n amazing.)

anyways, two frenchy recipes a la julia child: oeufs en crocotte and potage parmentier.
aka, fancy french eggs and simple french soup.

first, the eggs.

to start i buttered four ramekins and layered a lil' cheese on the bottom. now, since it was not yet payday and i was low on provisions i didn't have any fancy cheese. all i had was this:



a weight watchers cheese stick that kp left for me a few days back.

it's not gruyere (which i have since used and is absolutely heavenly) but hey - ya' work with what ya' got. so instead of foregoing cheese i cut up a cheese stick. i'm not too proud.

then i cracked an egg right into each ramekin.



then i topped each one with about 1 1/2 TBLs of heavy cream, a lil salt and pepper and the rest of the cheese stick.



i put them in a baking dish and poured boiling water into the dish until it reached about halfway up the ramekins.
a water bath if you will.

then i cooked them in a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

man oh man. mmmm. mmmm. mmmm.



again, due to the low provisions i only had two pieces of (almost stale) bread and one was the heel. i gave my guest the whole slice and i took the heel. this was fucking killer. really, really killer. i have made these like 4 times since this virgin voyage. i have used gruyere, blue cheese and i hope to use spinach in the bottom one of these days.

make these eggs now. right now.

on to the soup - potage (not "portage." sheesh!) pamentier.

it's a combo of like the simplest ingredients but it is pretty kick ass when they come together. all you need is potatoes, leeks, water, salt and pepper and a lil' heavy cream. no joke.

so i chopped the potatoes into cubes (skins on) and washed and chopped the leeks.



then they went into my stock pot with like 3 or 4 cups of water and salt and pepper.



this simmered about 45 minutes or so until the potatoes were fork tender. this is at about twenty-five minutes.



once the pots are tender you mash everything in the stock pot with a fork or potato masher. then right before serving you stir in a lil' heavy cream.

i topped the soup with a lil' shredded gruyere and some fresh chopped parsley. we also had some goat cheese so we spread it on some toasted french bread as an accompaniment. délicieux!



since you can't fill up on potage parmentier alone (and the eggs were long gone since we ate them around 9am) we also had a rump roast.

oh man. look at this baby. dumas never disappoints.



mike was in charge of the entree and side dishes (my sole responsibility was the soup) and he rubbed the roast down with salt and pepper and then poked a few garlic cloves into slits all around it.

this went into a 275 oven to roast for several hours. in the meantime he made an awesome sauce with chopped mushrooms and pearl onions.





i'm not sure what all was in there but it cooked on really low heat for a really long time and was freakin' delicious.

we also had a lil' braised cabbage to round the meal out.

all in all last saturday was a culinary delight!