You may already have read part 3 of my #biscaysailing-series and may have noticed that funny little detail I wrote about: Just during the mid-day before finally reaching the port of Brest in France after 4 days of crossing the Gulf of Biscay the crew of FREE WILLY summoned in the cockpit and stayed there in exciting pleasant anticipation of the ever so slightly landfall coming closer at last. Well, “ever so slightly” is the right phrase because it took us further 7 hours to finally moor the boat at Brest in the end.
The running joke aboard during that period of seemingly endless steaming toward the land was “let´s come up with classy German food recipes”. We discussed a load full of heavy duty German delicacies of which my German Eggs in Mustard Sauce turned out to be the one dish that earned the most “Yummy”-feedback by the fellow crew mates. In fact, we were so hungry that for the last three hours of our strenuous approach to Brest I was fantasizing of immediately firing up the stove and have them cooked. At 0300 a.m.. Well, I did not of course but after sleeping for some hours and getting up at 1000 in the morning, I asked my mates and they noddes – so here´s the most anticipated dish of them all …
German Eggs in Mustard Sauce – ingredients you need
German Eggs in Mustard Sauce is one of the absolute classic German food recipes. Most Germans will have to eat this dish during Kindergarten or school time, I re-discovered this in my early years after moving into my first own flat as a young man: It is not just fantastically tasting but also a very fast and very cheap recipe, ideal at that time. Now, as a grown up I love to play around with variants of that recipe and of course my own kids love it as well. What do you need to cook?
First of all, of course, eggs and mustard. As for the eggs, I would count 3 to 4 eggs per person. Have them boiled hard so that they are well done. Take them out, brush them under ice cold water and have them peeled. For the mustard – well, here´s where the tricky part kicks in, because the choice you take for the kind of mustard will for the most part define the taste of the whole dish. As an East German fellow my choice almost always is the tasty “Bautz´ner” which is a great, mild but always distinguishable mustard. You may take any other mustard as well as long as it isn´t a hot type (like Dijon mustard). On our boat, of course, I did not have my favourite kind of mustard at hand but the very sweet Portuguese did a good job.
Now, the potatoes will be cooked in a veggie broth. After taking out the potations (and put them into a heat conserving bowl) you do not get rid of the broth. Fine chopped onions are sweated in a pot. Take them out and put in a big chunk of butter. When butter cooks and turns slightly brown, add white flour and stir. Now, slowly add the broth up until you have the desired amount of sauce in the bowl – the flour will make the basic-sauce smooth, adds bond and texture. Reduce fire, it should not cook wildly anymore. Now, take out the mustard.
Easy & fast onboard cooking
Into the flour-broth have added spoons of mustard. You may try how much you´d need. For a pot as big as for four persons I would add one spoon full of mustard. Another nice variant would be to split the flour-broth into different pots, let´s say three, and add three distinctly different mustards. In the end, you may serve a “Trio of Mustard Sauce-Variants” to your astonished guests. Well, back on our Bavaria 37 I anyway just had that one mustard at hand, so I added fully loaded spoons and stirred it so that at the end a yellow shiny sauce bubbled in the pot.
After putting in the onions you may add some salt and a lot of sugar. Sugar is absolutely necessary because without it the taste of mustard would be too much. When you cook it for the first time, add sugar with caution and try tasting the sauce up until you reach a point where you enjoy the sweetness and the hotness of the mustard. A tiny bit of white pepper joins in and basically, that´s it. Well, not quite because now a question of almost religious importance comes up: How to put in the eggs? There are some who put in whole eggs, which I don’t like. Why? Because if done so, the eggs won´t contribute to the taste of the sauce. Another faction cuts the eggs into half and puts them on the table right before serving: Also a nope from me. I do chop the eggs into the pot and have them there for 5 minutes before serving: They can now emit some taste into the sauce.
I admit the overall looks of a dish, probably a bowl, filled with German Eggs in Mustard Sauce are not very much appealing like, let´s say, a sexy-roasted Steak – add some freshly chopped wild chives which are wonderfully underlining the great taste of German Eggs and it will immediately brighten up the looks. Of course, chive was not available in Brest.
What a great taste!
But anyway, as my mates received their bowl we all tuned into a paean of praise to the good old German cookery and wildly devoured the long awaited meal. It was a feast. German Eggs in Mustard Sauce are satiable and will fill your stomach immediately with a warm, pleasant feeling of a high-class nutrient. The taste is awesome and I can´t name a dish that has a similar distinct and outstanding taste. Try it at home, play around with the type of mustard you use and the grade of hotness and sweetness and you may as well discover a new favourite recipe for times when you need a fast, cheap and unusual dish to serve.
For the crew of the FREE WILLY feasting on German Eggs at that day have been a wonderful starter for a day off in Brest and a reward for the 4 days sailing-action dealing with the Gulf of Biscay. I know, we should have gone for a French recipe, like a Bouillabaisse (fish soup) but … the ongoing talk about these damn eggs the day before had been so imprinted into our minds that we had to fulfill the urgent need. And it was sooooo tasty … enjoy your German Eggs when you cook them, drop a comment how you liked it.
You may read all articles of my Gulf of Biscay-trip by clicking of the hashtag #biscaysailing
Related articles of possible interest:
All cooking recipes here
Offshore cooking: What to bear in mind as ship´s cook
The perfect galley, boat refit