Not one to indulge in a big breakfast too often, this morning was an exception. Following a hard Friday at work I hit the red wine and on my wander home had an unusual forward thinking epiphany and bought the ingredients for a morning fry up.
In my vain attempt at legitimising my inevitable satfat intake I chose to grill the meat then piled on the mushrooms and tomatoes (two of my five-a-day by breakfast? McKeith would be proud). About to take the sensible option; whisking and scrambling the egg, I heard another Dr Gillian whisper in my ear. Foolishly, I listened and went for the grown-up option; the healthy option: the yummy mummy poached egg. Only, I can't poach an egg. Rookie mistake.Realising my disadvantage I chose wisely (i thought) the River Cottage Family cookbook. A compilation of basics aimed at both children and their parents I imagined I couldn't go far wrong. Well Huge Furry - it did go wrong.
So what happened? I boiled the water 'til it was 'rolling' with bubbles, stirred it round and round with a wooden spoon, plopped a lovely free range egg in the centre, covered the pan with a nice tight lid and turned off the heat.
No fluffy egg cloud for me. Instead, swirling in my pan was an ugly mess of white ectoplasm (or egg-toplasm) with a small orange furry blob lost in the middle.I can hear Sophie Dahl sniggering over her rooibos tea already...
No fluffy egg cloud for me. Instead, swirling in my pan was an ugly mess of white ectoplasm (or egg-toplasm) with a small orange furry blob lost in the middle.I can hear Sophie Dahl sniggering over her rooibos tea already...
I'm now left with two choices. A - Try, try again. Experiment with vinegar levels, freshness of eggs, vigorousness of swirl. Or, B- buy an egg poacher. They're quite nice things really, in all shapes and sizes - hearts, flowers, bunnies. But I wonder whether amazon sell one shaped like a dunce hat...
A final word. I'd like to apologise to the chicken whose egg I wasted. Please don't take it personally.
Nx
Crack the egg into a cup first and then drop it into the water, you don't have to do the stirry round thing, that ofetn makes them go too swirly! Plus i never put vinegar in either and it's fine!
ReplyDeleteThanks to Gareth also for his egg-ceptional help:
ReplyDeleteThe secret is.. tiny little mugs. A ceramic espresso cup is the king. But I've got some smallish mugs that do the job too.
Water = boiling (it'll cool when the mug goes in). Crack egg into mug, submerge mug into water so that the hot water comes into contact with the egg while it is still encased in the protective zone of the mug. (I have already typed egg and mug so much that they have lost all meaning)
The idea is that a little bit of poaching happens while the egg can't escape; then when you pour it out (15-20 secs maybe?) it'll be hunky dory.... See more
With that said, I've still managed to mess this up a couple of times, but that was with non-fresh eggage. You can even broach the 'two-in-one-pan' taboo with this method.