SIGNATURE DISH: YANNICK ALLÉNO'S ŒUF CHLOROPHYLL

Medium boiled egg wrapped with, and surrounded by, a chlorophyll sauce

In the series “eggs and spinach is a good match”, I tried to replicate the iconic recipe of chef Yannick Alléno. Although I am very far from the work of art created by this twice 3-star chef, I am quite proud of the result, in particular for my first attempt. Well, first attempt, but it took me three tries before obtaining a decent result. The challenge is to pour the sauce, with the right temperature (lukewarm) and right texture (somewhat syrupy), on the egg at the right temperature (cold)…

The egg is very simply a medium boiled egg (œuf mollet), i.e. cooked 6 minutes in boiling water, cooled down in iced water immediately afterwards to top the cooking and kept in the fridge (or few minutes in the freezer in case of a hurry).

The sauce in Alléno’s recipe is normally made of spinach and parsley. As I didn’t have parsley -plus I found interesting to associate spinach leaves with garlicky ramps- I blanched spinach and ramp leaves for a couple of minutes (till the spinach starts to disaggregate when pressed with the fingers) in a salted boiling water, then immediately plunged in iced water to stop the cooking process and to preserve the dark green color. Then I mixed the spinach and ramp leaves in a blender (Vitamix) at maximum speed to obtain a very creamy and smooth purée and I strained it. Then I progressively added to this dark green a small quantity of warmed up (strained) broth (here, I used a pork broth, but it could be a chicken or a vegetable broth or glace), in which I had previously incorporated a leaf of gelatin and a few pinches of agar agar. Alléno’s recipe only used gelatin, but after 2 unsuccessful tries with gelatin only where the sauce was not wrapping the egg, I added those pinches of agar agar and adjusted the temperatures, and it worked!!! So…

I placed the cold egg on a grid above the serving plate, poured the green sauce on it until totally wrapped and delicately placed the egg on the plate, surrounded by the sauce. This was in fact a critical handling part and I had to adjust with some more sauce to cover the marks made by my big clumsy fingers!!! Where Alléno uses salmon roe, which I didn’t have, I use my favorite pink peppercorn berries.

Et voilà!!!
What a pleasure to cut this deep green egg in half and watch the golden yolk running out and contrasting with the beautiful emerald color of the sauce…

Ftr, I had the idea of making this dish while watching the French “Top Chef” program.

Although my egg presents plenty of flaws, I am all the prouder of this result as all those professional chefs engaged in this Top Chef competition, except one, didn’t obtain a result as good as mine… Of course, they probably had much less time and much more stress, and I also benefited from their examples and mistakes… plus I added agar agar...