The recipe for oeuf mayo is strikingly simple, which means the details really matter.
In the 1980s, my husband, Michael, and I bought a small house in eastern Connecticut and spent quiet weekends there with our young son. Our town had a population of about 5,000, and the weekly newspaper reported traffic violations and lost pets. When I’d tell my New York City friends where we lived, they wouldn’t have a clue. I’d tell them that we were a few exits from Old Saybrook on I-95 and get a little nod. I’d tell them we were on the Shoreline, as the stretch of the state that hugs the Long Island Sound is often called, and again I’d get a polite, if puzzled, nod. It wasn’t until I mentioned the Restaurant du Village, which would have been as right in the lush French countryside as it was on Main Street in Chester, Conn., that my friends could place us.
Du Village was the kind of restaurant I’d dream about coming across on a back road in Burgundy, a place where everyone is welcomed as family, where the room hums with the lively chatter of friendship and celebration and where the food is so satisfying that I’d run a bit of baguette across the plates to grab sauce and then remind myself not to lick my fingers. It was founded in 1979 by Priscilla Martel and Charlie van Over, a couple in life and in business, and during the time that they owned du Village — they sold it in 1990 — and well before farm-to-table was a trend, they created a network of farmers, fishermen, growers and producers who brought them ingredients that were rare then and are still prized today.
Michael and I could go to du Village only on a splurge. But in the years since the restaurant was sold, we’ve gotten a taste of what we missed, because we’ve become good friends with Priscilla and Charlie, sharing meals at home and, throughout the pandemic, recipes and reminiscences. When we could finally eat together, Priscilla cooked us a dinner of dishes that had been on the restaurant’s menu. The main course was game hens crapaudine à la diable — spatchcocked birds coated with mustard, inspired by the way Fernand Point did them at his legendary French restaurant, La Pyramide. And the dessert was a Priscilla specialty, white-wine butter cake. But it was the starter that made me a little teary. When Priscilla put a wicker tray on the table and announced that the five little dishes were hors d’oeuvres variées, I was back in France on my earliest trips, back to friends’ homes, back to Parisian bistros that I loved — and back to Restaurant du Village.
Priscilla’s tray held a bowl with saucisson, one with lentils, another with carrot salad and a fourth with beets, but it was the plate with hard-boiled eggs, halved and covered with satiny mayonnaise, that brought on the wave of nostalgia.
Oeuf mayo, or egg mayo, seldom seen in the United States, is revered in France, where there’s even a society to “safeguard” the dish: the Association de sauvegarde de l’oeuf mayonnaise. At Bistrot Paul Bert, a favorite of mine, oeuf mayo was the first starter out of the kitchen when the restaurant reopened after closing during the pandemic, and the tony Le Voltaire keeps oeuf mayo on the menu at 0.9 euros, or about $1.07. A supermarket baguette can cost more.
With only two elements, the dish is striking in its simplicity. But like so many simple dishes, there are decisions to be made along the way. For the eggs, Priscilla starts the cooking by covering them with water. She brings the water to a boil, reduces the heat so that it maintains a strong simmer and cooks the eggs for seven minutes, finishing with firmish yolks that are just a little jammy at the center. You might want to cook your eggs a little less or a little more, but no matter how you cook them, treat yourself to a little fun: Crack the shells à la Priscilla. After draining the cooked eggs, she puts them back in the pan and slips, slides and shakes the pan around to crackle the shells. You can tap your eggs against the counter to get the peeling going, but it’s not nearly as amusing.
And then there’s the mayonnaise. Could you take your favorite store-bought brand, season it highly and thin it just a bit for this dish? Of course you could, but I hope that at least once, you won’t, that you’ll set the blender on the counter, give yourself five minutes and make Priscilla’s mayo. Mayonnaise, essentially egg and oil, has always seemed like a miracle of science to me, but it’s really an exercise in restraint. To get a velvety mayonnaise, you whir an egg — Priscilla uses a whole egg rather than just a yolk (more typical) — with something acidic (here lemon juice and white-wine vinegar), season it with salt and Dijon mustard and then steadily pour in the oil, going slowly (the restraint part), peeking and scraping midway and stopping as soon as the oil is incorporated. No matter how many times I make mayonnaise, I always feel like a wizard.
When you’re ready to assemble this classic, halve the eggs and arrange them domes up, which is classic, or down, which is pretty, too, then check the mayo, first for seasoning and then for consistency. In order for it to slide off the spoon in a steady ribbon, and cover the egg smoothly and generously, you’ll probably need to thin it a bit. Just add drops of hot water (or lemon juice). Pour the mayonnaise over the eggs, and serve them pristinely plain or choose a few go-alongs: maybe fillets of anchovy or strips of roasted red pepper; maybe a sprinkle of snipped chives; maybe some fried capers.
Put the eggs next to a salad, so that they make a starter on their own, or add them to your tray of hors d’oeuvres variées. If you end up loving oeuf mayo — Priscilla counts it among her desert-island dishes — then maybe we can start our own society.
Recipe: Egg Mayo
Dorie Greenspan is an Eat columnist for the magazine. She has won five James Beard Awards for her cookbooks and writing. Her new cookbook, “Baking With Dorie,” is set for publication this fall.
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July 07, 2021 at 04:00PM
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The Egg Dish So Good They Have a Society in France to ‘Safeguard’ It - The New York Times
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