Poached Eggs with Red Wine Sauce

• How to Poach an Egg
• How to Make a Red Wine Sauce without Stock
• How to Bake Eggs
• How to Make a Quick Fresh Tomato Sauce
• How to Make French-Style Croûtons

I always get peculiar looks when I serve this traditional. Burgundian dish at a weekend brunch. Eggs with red wine sauce? A single bite convinces guests of the genius of the combination and leaves them wondering why they’ve never before encountered les oeufs en meurette. My own introduction to the dish, 20 years ago, was less than encouraging. I was hitchhiking around France, Consulting Waverley Root’s marvelous book The Food of France, and doing my best to sample regional specialties, but without the funds to indulge myself in the best places. And being in Burgundy, I naively expected that my proximity to noble vines would guarantee marvelous food even on my bare-bones budget. The result was a somewhat warped and disillusioning view of France’s country cooking, but probably a more accurate reflection of everyday eating habits than I would have encountered in the top Michelin-starred restaurants. In any case, my plate of oeufs en meurette, at a simple bistro within walking distance of the vineyards of Gevrey-Chambertin, was a disastrous mess of two overcooked eggs sitting on a couple of slices of soggy toast and masked with a sauce that looked like a bottle of gros rouge—the kind of red wine sold by the liter in plastic bottles—thickened with a handful of raw flour.