A CHEF, A DISH: ŒUF CHLOROPHYLLE BY ALLÉNO

ŒUF MOLLET SAUCE CHLOROPHYLLE 

(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 right temperature (lukewarm) and right texture (somewhat syrupy) sauce on the right temperature (cold) egg…

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 stop 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 last week. 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!