Just Three: Polenta, Eggs, Mushrooms

Which came first, the bottle or the plate? Chicken/egg, TV/commercial, food/wine, show-me-yours/I'll-show-you-mine. In our house, such questions carry weight, a seriousness you might consider more properly reserved for electrocardiograms, or matters of national security. The thing of it is, in wine country, at least in the fractional hectare of the 707 area code delineated by my family's split-rail fence line, the debate over the hierarchical structure of food vis-a-vis wine matters, not least because you'll be neither fed nor drunk until we've settled the matter. And I seriously doubt that I'm alone in building menus around bottles at least as often as choosing wines to match food.

Context, perhaps, is warranted: My wife is on what I can like to call a Chard bender, and the wine racks where we keep our whites look a bit like the maples of her youth (she's a transplanted Right Coaster) come the first snows of November: You know they were full, you can quite clearly remember seeing them shot through with color and promise (although you can't quite place the date), but all that stands in front of you today is dry wood and the lonely spaces between. This is, to be clear, an issue of frequency, not of quantity, because my wife doesn't really drink all that much. However,  and here again I count my blessings, she is happy enough to drink small quantities frequently, thereby encouraging both my regular raids on the family cellar and my predilection for pigging, but also - when the Chard bender is in full effect - leading to Saharan absences of the one white varietal that will acceptably whet her cute little whistle.


Result: Me, along with my youngest daughter, the inimitable Miss M, on a late afternoon restocking mission. I wanted to go to Alexander Valley where, we think - heretically, to most of my Russian River Valley neighbors, given its warmer climes and historical affinity for Cabernet - some of the very finest Chardonnays in the New World are produced (if you're skeptical, check out Stuhlmuller Vineyards and Robert Young Estate Winery first, and then we'll talk). Unfortunately, poor little M was not feeling well, so rather than strap her into the back of the car and drag her around the next valley over, we played turistas and tooled around the Healdsburg plaza, her with  an organic chocolate frozen yogurt from Snow Bunny (outlandishly overpriced by the calorie, but healthy and delicious all the same), and me with a visit to one of my favorite makers of local Chardonnay, Ms Susie Selby of Selby Winery. Another very accomplished winemaker (Bill Parker, currently making outstanding wines for White Oak, and previously for Matanzas Creek and BR Cohn) once told me that Chardonnay, more than any other varietal, reflects the influence and intentions of the winemaker, and I've repeatedly found this to be the case: Just as a great vineyard will display its terroir in the wine that it births, so too will a fine Chardonnay reflect the hand of its maker. This turns out to be great news for Chard drinkers, because it means that if you can find a winemaker whose style of Chardonnay agrees with you, you can pretty much stop worrying about the rest.

My wife and I share an affinity for the style of Chardonnay, somewhat unfashionable these days, defined by a dense core of fruit framed in toasty oak and featuring flavors like sweet butter, toasted coconut, and creme brulee; we're much less keen on either the overtly tropical, almost sweet, or the steely and austere styles that have become so much the rage in our Valley. To get back on point, Selby makes just the sort of Chard we love, from local fruit (one of her vineyards is across the street from our kids' elementary school, an endearing factoid for me), using classical techniques and French oak barrels. Plus, we think it's kind of cool to support female winemakers: Not only do women, in my opinion, tend to have finer palates than men but, like professional chefs, their presence in big-time wine making keeps growing, despite the inversely stacked odds of an industry historically dominated by men. The other really cool thing about Selby is that the White House (not just Obama's - this has been going on for quite some time, which says great things about the ability of good wine to transcend poor politics) regularly serves her Reserve Chardonnay at big-wig state dinners, and the menus are all over the tasting room walls. This provides a serious tactical edge to the home cook who, like me, having already fallen in love with the wine, now needs to build a menu around it. Engage your mental palate and taste the wine while you peruse the menus, and I will assure you of this one thing: You will want buy the wine, and you will almost surely try to cook some scallops or corn to match.

I adore scallops, but my wife inexplicably doesn't (and she loves seafood, which strikes me as peculiar, almost like saying that you love Italian cheeses but not mozzarella, but maybe I'm biased and it's more like saying you red wines but not Merlot or something), and in any case I still had leftover polenta from a recent edition of Just Three, so I figured, why press my luck, just go with the corn. We also share a love of breakfast-for-dinner, and the rest, as they say, is history. This is a really easy recipe and a good way to leverage leftovers and stuff you've probably got lying about; the only downside is the number of pans, but I think you could quite easily do the polenta first, then the mushrooms, hold them both, and finish with the eggs, all in one pan).

Crispy Polenta with Sunnyside-Up Eggs and a Creamy Mushroom Sauce

1. Get your pans hot. Then, rewind time and spread the leftover polenta from the other night's dinner onto a lightly oiled sheet tray and stick it in the fridge (yes, I actually did this the other night - it's second nature now, I almost always double the polenta recipe specifically so I can do this, the possibilities are endless and the effort minimal.) Carefully turn the sheet of polenta onto a cutting board and cut in triangles (or squares, or use a cookie cutter for fun shapes - the kids will love it). 
2. Cook the polenta, the tray-side down, in a little butter or olive oil, over medium-low heat, until it forms a crunchy, golden-brown crust. This can take some time.
3. While the polenta is cooking, wash and thinly slice a bunch of mushrooms. I used criminis (I like the vaguely truffle-like quality of criminis with the corn and eggs, but anything, or a mix, would be great). Sautee with a little butter over medium heat until the 'shrooms have lost most of their volume, their water is gone, and they start to color up. Season liberally with salt and pepper. If this wasn't "Just Three" and I still didn't need to use eggs, I'd say toss a teaspoon or so of fresh thyme leaves in with them - thyme and mushrooms do amazing things for one another.
4. While all this is going on - it sounds like a lot happening at the same time, but it is all trivially easy - pour the eggs, two by two, into small nonstick pans along with a little butter and a few drops of water. Cover with foil and cook over very low heat.
5. When the polenta is done and the eggs are nearly so, deglaze the mushrooms with a few tablespoons of heavy cream (again, if I had another ingredient, I'd use a little white wine first, cook it off, and then add the cream). As soon as the cream bubbles and begins to thicken, plate and serve.