The European cookbook for American homes (from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France)

These spiny sea pin-cushions go by various names, sea-eggs, sea-urchins and sea-chestnuts, along the many rocky coasts where they cling to the bottom until the fisherman comes along, balancing himself in the stern of his rowboat while he pries them off with a long pole. They are prized for the spoonful or two of salubrious coral within their spiny shells which has a flavor a little like caviar and comes in many shades, from crimson through pinkish-red to a pale yellowish yolk, depending on its sex and diet. There is considerable waste of entrails, which is cleverly flipped out with the fisherman's knife in cleaning them. The coral is then loosened from its shell moorings and either sucked like an egg or spooned out. Both cooked and raw, it is also spread on buttered toast. The oursin enters into Provencal cooking in a number of interesting recipes. A few tablespoons of the coral, milt or roe, mashed in cream, is the distinctive touch added to an oursinade, that glorified fish stew cooked in white wine, the gravy thickened with a half-dozen egg-yolks and the creamed oursins stirred in at the finish. Oursins color and flavor mayonnaise more deliciously than crayfish butter, for a fish salad. These sea-eggs are in fact the secret of the success of many marine salads all along the Mediterranean. In Nice the natives go out in the bay and spear a bushel of these bristling sea-hedgehogs, take the dripping basket to the nearest wine shop and throw an oursin party. Sitting at their ease in the shade of a sidewalk cafe they shuck and eat them without seasoning beyond their own sparkling sea water, which is drunk from the shell the same way that Frenchmen smack up the oyster liquor after swallowing the oyster itself. White wine mates perfectly with the tasty oursin tang and indeed is the most expensive part of this snack, since the sea-chestnuts themselves are of little more value than their brothers that grow on trees. A dozen of them yield no more meat than one fat oyster, so it takes patience to eat them. In Nice there are street stands where they are expertly opened by the vendor and the salty highly-fishy liquid and vivid star-shaped roe are consumed on the spot. Those who dote on them say that no other shellfish carries so much of the concentrated tang of the sea. (Œufs) Perigord ^^ pERIGORD (Œufs Perigord) Sauce Perigueux i small onion, minced i herb bouquet i shallot, minced i teaspoon beef extract 3 tablespoons goose fat or butter i small truffle, sliced thin 54 pound boiled ham, diced lA cup fine dry white wine 1 tablespoon minced truffle Montbazillac, if possible i]/2 cups stock Salt and pepper 6 extra-fresh eggs Fry onion and shallot in fat until they begin to color. Add ham and minced truffle and fry until onion is golden. Add stock and bouquet and simmer. Remove bouquet. Add beef extract, sliced truffle, wine and seasonings; simmer 3 minutes. (A few pieces of diced chicken or game bird is an improvement.) Pour sauce into a cocotte dish and heat. Add eggs, season, and poach on top of flame or in oven. Bordelais EGGS IN COCOTTE WITH BORDELAISE SAUCE (Œufs en Cocotte Bordelaise) !4 cup butter 6 eggs 6 artichoke bottoms Salt and pepper Sauce Bordelaise