Balsamic Fried Eggs
Serves 2
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons good-quality extra virgin olive oil
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ tablespoons aged balsamic vinegar
- Spicy lettuce (red mustard greens, watercress, or arugula), for garnish
- In a nonstick or seasoned egg pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat.
- When the oil is hot but not quite at the smoking point, crack open the eggs into the pan and cook for about 25 seconds, keeping the heat medium.
- As they puff up, baste the top of the yolks with the hot oil to help them cook.
- After the eggs set, slide them onto a warm plate. Pour off any excess oil.
- Add the balsamic vinegar to the pan, and let it sizzle and reduce slightly for a moment or two.
- Drizzle the vinegar over the eggs and drop a small handful of spicy garden lettuce on top. Serve with toasted bread.
Serves 6
Ingredients:
- ¾ pound asparagus
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 cup heavy cream
- Salt to taste
- 12 eggs
- 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
- 6 thin slices prosciutto
- Edible flowers (nasturtiums, pansies, borage or sage - whatever is in your garden), chopped for garnish
- 2 tablespoons of your favorite chopped herbs for garnish
- Preheat the over to 350?F.
- Trim the ends of the asparagus. Peel the fibrous skin of the spears with a vegetable peeler. Slice the asparagus on a bias about ¼ of an inch thick. Leave some of the smaller tips whole. In a skillet, sauté the asparagus lightly in 1 tablespoon of the butter. This should be brief, about 1 minute or less, because the asparagus is sliced thin. Add the cream to the pan and bring mixture to a gentle simmer, then quickly remove from the heat. The sweet asparagus will perfume the cream. Season with salt.
- Butter six small gratin dishes and crack 2 eggs into each one. Pour ¼ cup or more of the asparagus-cream mixture over each set of eggs. Make sure to get enough of the asparagus into each dish. Gently warm the bottom of each gratin dish over a low burner for about 3 minutes, or until the whites are about half-cooked. Place tiny pieces of the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter on top of the eggs, sprinkle with Parmesan, if using, and finish cooking in the oven for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on how cooked you like the eggs.
- Place the gratins on small plates and drape a slice of prosciutto over each gratin. Sprinkle with edible flowers and herbs. Serve with warm toast.
We offer a daily changing California/Mediterranean-inspired menu in an industrial chic setting located in the heart of the bustling Mission district. Dinner is served nightly as well as weekend brunch both Saturday and Sunday. Foreign and independent films are screened in our covered outdoor courtyard. Seating is available indoors fireside as well as upstairs in our semi-private mezzanine overlooking the dining room. Guests may enjoy cocktails and our complete menu from the main bar or on the patio outside. Modernism West, an art gallery in collaboration with Martin Mueller and Modernism Inc, is open to the public most nights and is an ideal space for private dining. After dinner drinks with rotating DJ's completes the evening in our adjacent bar, Laszlo.
The Foreign Cinema
2534 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94110
415-648-7600
Website: http://www.foreigncinema.com About Gayle Pirie:
She is an original talent who has been deeply involved in the competitive and innovative ferment of the San Francisco restaurant scene for over two decades. Long standing tenures at Zuni Cafe and Chez Panisse earned them critical approval for the purity, quality and consistency of their cuisine. Pirie and Clark then developed a restaurant consulting practice to create restaurant concepts and designs for a diverse and adventurous set of clients in North America, Asia, and Canada. They spent nearly two years in Hong Kong developing two new restaurants, and have traveled widely in Europe and Asia researching locally produced and artisinal ingredients. In 2001 the duo took over the kitchen of Foreign Cinema and implemented an ever changing Mediterranean influenced menu and full oyster bar, earning the restaurant three stars from The San Francisco Chronicle and six consecutive "Top 100" rankings as well as rave reviews from the New York Times, Gourmet, Cosmopolitan, The Examiner, SF Weekly, and San Francisco Magazine. They have published two cookbooks, Country Egg, City Egg in 2000 and Bride and Groom, just published in 2006.
Buy her cookbook on Amazon: Country Egg, City Egg
