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Observing Liturgical Rhythm

Oeufs en Meurette

‘Surely this recipe could be made simpler. The constant

heating, cooling and reheating especially makes no sense

with coddled eggs’ commented a reader. He was right. The

original recipe called for seven different pans. I have cut it

down to four, which still seems a lot for a simple peasant

dish but there you go: good cooking can be a long and

messy business.

At Lent, I climb once again on to my wagon and

abstain from alcohol. At Le Café Anglais we run a special

menu that follows the path of virtue and features the

burgeoning roots, shoots and leaves of the season, and we

try to eschew fats and carbohydrates. If I tell people that I

adhere to some form of Lenten abstention I am generally

asked if I am a Christian or, more particularly, a Roman

Catholic. I am, in fact, an unbaptised heathen, but I like

to observe the liturgical rhythm of the seasons because

they make sense. After all, no one questions our sense of

religion when we tell them that we intend to celebrate

Christmas or if we want a leg of lamb on Easter Sunday.

My observance of Lent takes a minor form. Originally,

Lent was a serious fast with no meat or animal products

allowed. Gradually the notion of Lenten observance was

eroded, meat being allowed into the diet once a day –

but not on Fridays. Central to the Lenten fast was the

proscription on eggs; it was to use up any eggs that one

made pancakes on the last day before the fasting began.

Similarly the Easter egg was the celebration of the end of

the fast and, of course, the arrival of spring and some fresh

food in a diet dominated by store crops and little else. It

was not for nothing that the period of fasting coincided

with the period when there was not much to eat anyway.

I see some point in abstaining from eggs. I don’t like

to see them taken for granted. In professional kitchens

nowadays eggs rarely come in their usual form of

packaging, the ovoid porous shell that we know of old

and that breaks easily when dropped. Most eggs used for

baking or any other application will come from a carton of

pasteurised yolks or whites. I remember a young Mexican

commis chef who was given the job of breaking sixty eggs

for a cake mixture and proceeded to execute the task,

bringing each egg up to his nose to ascertain it was good.

I think a little of that reverence is rather admirable.

49

February