Sanctuary from The Mad World
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. - Orson Welles

We happened to be in Lyon in 2005 when we stumbled upon Les Halles de Lyon. It was an exciting place: an old but clean market full of all types of French delicacies such as meat, cheese, chocolate, wine, and seafood. There were a lot of stalls selling oysters, crabs, shrimps, and fishes but only one placed wobbly aluminum tables and chairs around its stall. We asked for a table at Chez Leon and pointed on the menu. No one spoke English then and we took our chances. Since then, we dreamed of going back but it took us a while to do so.

I love scrambled eggs. I could never resist the lure of scrambled eggs in hotels’ breakfast buffet although I’d consumed the omelette from the egg station. Trained at the dorm canteen in my University days, I like to have them with something salty (bacon, ham, sausages) and something sweet (pancake with fruits and maple syrup).

Scrambled eggs vary from flaky to creamy. I hate the clumpy type which is normally achieved by adding liquid into the beaten eggs. I discovered recently that the correct thing to do is to stir-fry the eggs in the pan and add the liquid only at the last minute to create creaminess as detailed here.

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Pork, tomatoes and anchovies are intriguing. I could imagine how comforting the dish was going to be when I read this NYT article. But I had pork neck and sage instead of pork chops and rosemary. So I improvised.

The resulting sauce was wonderful. The depth of the sauce, mixed in with couscous, was worth the oil splatter which now coats the wooden floor on my dining room. I don’t care much for the resulting pork meat though. In fact, I think this dish would be wonderful made with brown bone-stock and studded with vegetables instead.

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Italian meatballs in tomato sauce is a classic but results vary widely. My earlier attempts result in cardboard-like, crispy balls. I long for the tender and juicy stuff I sometimes - restaurants serve the cardboard version, too - encounter.

On hindsight, I think the problem was laziness. I hate the oil splatter so I often dumped the meatballs into the tomato sauce to cook them. I think that method just encourages the juice to leak into the sauce. The meaty flavour, which adds depth into the otherwise one-dimensional tomato sauce, should be obtained from pan jus instead of squeezing the flavour out of those meatballs.

One idle moment I thought, what happened if I roll the meatballs on flour before frying? Apparently, that’s how juicy, flavourful meatballs are created.

The recipe below is extremely versatile and can be modified to suit any taste and ingredients. Sometimes I add things according to my whim (and to get rid of rotting vegetables and unidentifiable meat in the fridge) but this is the basic.

BTW, I’m recently into chopped lemon, skin, pith, pulp and all. I discovered it when I chewed on some dish (now I forget what it was) in the school canteen. I was surprised at how fresh, chewy and lemony it was (doh!) without the bitterness. I’ve been adding chopped lemon pieces now to meatballs, sauces, and soups. Cooked for a long time, the lemon bits turn chewy and lovely without losing the lemony punch and without the hassle of zesting. In this particular meatball recipe, I think the fresh lemon bits bring out the salty-richness of the meat without additional salt. Of course, use them very sparingly.

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Fried hard-boiled eggs? How weird, right? But it’s quite a popular dish from Padang from West Sumatra. I quite like it with steamed rice which enhances the eggs’ special texture.

There are many variations of the dish: some of the sambal do not use belachan but I like a little more depth in imine. Some make theirs with a lot of liquid, almost curry-like, but I like mine dry and slightly oily. Do as you like.

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