Recipe for Eggs Baked on a Bed of Sauteed Mushrooms and Croutons

I'm on the e-mail list for the Splendid Table's Weeknight Kitchen weekly recipe. Most of the time it isn't vegetarian, but the one this week came from my super crush Deborah Madison. I guess she looks really old in person and on TV but I am absolutely in love with the way she looks on the cover of her book Vegetarian Cooking for Everybody.

We made it last night and it turned out most excellent.

Anyway, here's the recipe:
Note: While the oven is heating, brown the bread cubes and sautee the mushrooms. By then the oven will be ready. Don'’t use a convection setting the moving air will blow on the yolks and cook them unevenly.

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 slices bread, cut into small cubes
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/3 cup finely diced shallot or onion
• 6 large brown mushrooms, cremini or portobello, thickly sliced (about 1/2 pound)
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 2 teaspoons chopped marjoram or rosemary
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 generous teaspoons tomato paste
• 3/4 cup red wine, preferably the wine you'll be drinking
• 2 or 4 eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly butter 2 shallow baking dishes and set them on the sheet pan.

2. Melt half the butter in a medium skillet, add the cubed bread, and toss it about the pan. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until it'’s golden and crisp, about 8 to 10 minutes, but not hard. Divide the croutons between the dishes.

3. Heat the oil and remaining butter in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the shallot and cook, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes. Raise the heat, then add the mushrooms, most of the herbs, and a few pinches of salt. Sautee until the mushrooms have started to brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, then add the wine and immediately scrape the pan to release the juicy bits. Lower the heat and simmer until a few tablespoons of juice remain. Season with salt and pepper and divide the mushrooms between the dishes.

4. Break one or two eggs over the croutons and mushrooms and add a pinch of salt and some pepper. Bake until the whites are set, about 15 minutes, and the yolks are as firm as you like. Remove, sprinkle the rest of the herbs over the top, and serve.

Ms. stu and I used marjoram and rosemary and settled on three eggs. I'm not sure why the recipe calls for splitting it into two baking dishes. We put it in one and it turned out just fine. It scoops out on to the plate really easy and doesn't break apart when placed on a plate. We ended up baking it for about fifteen minutes. The egg white mixes in with the mushroom, so it can be difficult to tell when it has set. After fifteen minutes the yolk was still runny---but that's how I love my eggs. If you want a hard yolk I think it may dry out the mushrooms in the amount of time it would take to get the yolk hard, but I dunno.

Most of the ingredients we always have in stock anyway. All we had to pick up were the mushrooms and those cost less than three bucks.

Look Ma, no wires

I bought an 802.11g network wireless card earlier in the week. I’ve been interested in taking advantage of free WiFi at a coffee shop near my house and I assumed the connection would be faster than the dial-up service I get at home. I’ve been looking into it for a couple of months, but all of the stuff I was finding on the net seemed to be about setting up your own network, not logging on to someone else’s network.

I asked around and posted on my favorite local message board. Turns out all I needed was the card. It was really simple and it works just fine. But the best part of all is there is an open network that reaches my house. In other words, I get free high-speed Internet access at home.

I once read an article on Slate about the ethics of using an open network that isn’t necessarily “available” to others. The author’s conclusion was that if someone was savvy enough to have an open network they probably either wanted people to take advantage of it or don’t care if people take advantage of it.

I’m not savvy enough to figure out where the connection is coming from, so I don’t know if it’s my next-door neighbor, or if it’s the library one block away (which I would’ve thought was too far).

I’ve been told that I don’t have any additional security concerns since I‘ve got the standard McAfee protection. I guess I just have to make sure my files aren’t being shared. I haven’t figured out if my fly is open yet.

A Ghost Emerges from the Electronic Ether

A couple of weeks ago I stopped at my parents to borrow my dad’s reciprocating saw to use while we were taking down a chain link fence in my backyard. My mom told me that a woman named Marilyn called and asked if I still lived there, if my parents saw me very much, and then if I still lived in the state. She claimed to be a friend of mine from college, but wouldn’t leave a telephone number and my mom didn’t want to give my telephone number away. The problem was that I never knew a Marilyn in college, at least not that I could recall.

In the back of my head I theorized that it could be my old girlfriend, Madeleine. I started dating her when I was nineteen and in my second year of community college. She was a high school senior that worked with me at a fast food restaurant. Ten years later it’s a little difficult to remember all of the details, but as I recall Madeleine was a party girl that was running from a lot of demons. She never knew her father and her mom—who I liked very much—had a series of unstable relationships with men. Madeleine was a binge drinker who had experimented with drugs, including meth. I still don’t know how we hooked up, but after she had a traumatic event happen to her she made some serious decisions about changing her life. We started dating in January of 1995.

She was my first serious girlfriend. I had gone out on a few dates in high school, but I was really immature, physically and emotionally at that time; I hadn’t even kissed a girl by the ripe old age of nineteen. Our relationship was very intense and all-consuming. We spent a lot of time together. By the summer we were quite inseparable and very much in love.

She started college in Washington that fall and I returned to community college with only a few more credits needed before I would transfer to a four year university. Eventually the plan was that I would transfer to her college and join her in Washington. But by the spring of 1996 she was going through another major change. She had become a born again Christian and it was having a profound impact on her choices and her relationship with me. Without dragging out all of the painful details we (she) decided to end the relationship. It really broke my heart. She came home for a few months over the summer and we nearly got back together, but the last time I saw her was that summer.

We exchanged a few more letters and a couple more telephone calls, but it became very clear that her life had become very different and there wasn’t a place for me in it. Several months later I would start dating the woman who was to become Ms. stu, but truthfully I probably didn’t recover from the breakup with Madeleine for another year. I never heard from Madeleine again.

Yesterday I got an e-mail at my work’s general e-mail address that was directed to me. It was from Madeleine. I guess with the mysterious telephone call I was half expecting the e-mail, but it still caught me by surprise. The e-mail was rather cryptic as she wasn’t sure if it was directed to me, or if someone else would be reading it. She said she had been thinking about me, wanted to apologize for the way our relationship ended and asked me to write to her and tell her what I was up to.

My relationship with Ms. stu is incredibly strong, so I wasn’t worried about any illicit offers to hook up or stirring up any old feelings. So I e-mailed her back and told her what I had been up to in the last nine years—school, work, marriage. She responded and told me that she was married too and had a daughter and was currently living in Michigan after three years in California. But she was still guarded with the information and said that the story of her marriage and child were intimately wrapped up in the story of our breakup. If that didn’t peak my curiosity I’m not sure what would. What bothers me so much was she seems real sad. She never said anything about disappointments, or unhappiness, but I sensed something. I e-mailed back and told her she could talk to me if she wanted, but I would leave that to her.

What will come of this?