albert's fallen on the sun, cracked his head wide open

[jazzfish]

One of the great disappointments in my life is that uilos Does Not Eat Eggs.

I am a big fan of Breakfast Any Time, and over the last holy cow ten years I've more or less perfected my pancake recipe. (Although these days instead of "1 cup flour" it's "5 oz flour," because flour should be measured by weight not volume.) I make pretty good crepes, too, and my waffles are only okay but I blame that on having a not so good waffle iron. Real Breakfast is a thing that happens, at least one day a weekend.

I don't get to make eggs for two, though. Which is a shame, because I like eggs, and there's an awful lot of things you can do with them. So I only get eggs when I'm willing to cook for just me, and also to do the dishes from actually cooking something.

Scrambled eggs are easy: skillet on low-medium heat, a little butter in the skillet, beat the eggs but not too much and mix in some milk and chili powder, and go. (I am not a believer in "cheesy scrambled eggs," mostly on the grounds that it's a pain in the neck to clean up melted cheese and egg.) Omelettes are harder, but the failure mode of "omelette" is scrambled eggs with stuff, so that's alright.

I've tried poaching eggs, and I mostly end up with a mess. A few years ago I got a couple of silicone "poach pods," which hold the egg and float in a covered pot of boiling water. This makes something close enough to poached eggs for my taste. I can never get the yolks right, though. Either they're too runny, or they're solid and I might as well have hard-boiled them. What I'm looking for is something Lewis Grizzard described as "over medium": "The yolk shouldn't run out when you cut it. It should ooze."

A couple of weeks ago Shauna (idoru, not that she posts anymore) put up a link on Facebook to the basted egg. That's "basted," not "blasted" or "bastard," though I suppose uilos would disagree. It's sort of halfway between frying and poaching. I've tried it a couple of times, and their description of what happens to the yolk isn't really accurate. It doesn't so much "change colour" as it develops a sort of translucent skin of cooked egg-white over it. When the skin covers the whole thing, it's nearly overdone and you should have served it up about ten seconds ago. It's tasty, though. Served over toast the yolk sort of seeps in, and the whites aren't as crispy-crunchy as I get with fried eggs. It has replaced "scrambled" as my go-to egg.

I haven't tried the egg-over-tortilla-basted-with-salsa that the article describes. Maybe next week for lunch.

(happy birthday, sor!)

Comments

[notyourwendy]

Eggs are not Food.

Eggs are Ingredients.

Do you eat baking powder straight? Butter? Soy Sauce? No. These are Ingredients, not Food. Same with eggs.

[jazzfish]

Given your cousin I would think you'd be a bit more cautious about discussing not eating butter straight. :)

[thanate]

I do "egg on bread"-- butter bread, stick it butter-side-down in a pan, crack an egg on top. Heat until the bread is grilled to your preferred stage, flip over & do it again for the egg.

The trick is not to break the yolk while turning, which I'm pretty sure used to be easier, so possibly those with less mass-produced eggs in their fridges would do better. Anyway, when done right you get buttery toast plus egg, only have to clean one pan (which was greased w/ the butter before egging) and you can creditably argue that the eggs *are* an ingredient.

[novel_machinist]

eggs are beautiful and I am sad for your friend.

[jazzfish]

Huh! A grilled egg sandwich. That does sound like it'd be hard to not crack the yolk with the bread flopping on top of it, though.

The defining boundary for "egg as ingredient" is quiche: anything with more egg than that is unacceptable.

[jazzfish]

Eggs are *amazing*. I am only mostly kidding when I say that I'm polyamorous because I want to date someone I can make eggs for in the mornings. :)

[thanate]

Well, open faced-- I only use one piece of bread per egg. The failure mode of yolk breakage tends to be either as the egg hits the griddle, or if the bread flops down too off-center. If you let it alone, sometimes a little breakage will fix itself, too, and the darker you want your bread grilled the easier it is to turn. (I don't believe in crunchy or charcoaly bread, so that doesn't help. But lower heat can cook the egg a little more before turning w/o completely over-grilling the bread.)

Might also combine well, dish-wise, with grilled cheese night, if you do the egg on bread after the sandwiches.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Grandma would cook bacon then eggs and spoon the bacon fat over the eggs to cook the top

[jazzfish]

Mmmm, that sounds tasty. I am also a believer in "cook bacon, then scramble eggs in the bacon grease," or rather in having someone else do this thing.

[plumbob78.livejournal.com]

Fried over easy is my go-to. Scrambled only when I can't be arsed to put in the effort or really don't want to face the possibility of being upset with myself for fucking up frying them.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

There is a small jar of rendered bacon grease in the back of the fridge if you want it for eggs. I saved it with the idea I'd do something with it, but haven't figured out what yet.

[jazzfish]

I've never been a fan of what frying does to the whites (thin, tasteless, floppy). Though I concede that that might have more to do with my failure at frying them than anything.

[jazzfish]

I might, thanks!

[plumbob78.livejournal.com]

*shrug* It is, after all, a matter of taste.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

I like scrambled eggs with cheese and sautéed onions. Mmmm...so good.

Poached eggs are awesome. I have a pan that makes great poached eggs. Considering that I love eggs Benedict, we have them fairly frequently.

You make crepes? Yummy! Do you have a recipe you could share?

[jazzfish]

Benedicts (well, Halifaxes, over smoked salmon instead of Canadian bacon) are SO GOOD.

My crepe recipe:
4 eggs, beaten well
1 cup (5 oz) flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp butter, melted

In a mixer, beat eggs. Alternate adding a little flour/sugar and milk/water, mixing well.
Mix in butter.
Pour into pie pan. Refrigerate 1 hr.

Makes a whole lot of crepes.

(For savory crepes, add 1/4 tsp salt to the eggs, skip the sugar, and double the flour and milk. I like the savory recipe less than the sweet one.)

I use an electric upside-down crepe maker that I found at the thrift store. Actually I use two of them, alternating, because that means I can make all the crepes in about half an hour instead of about an hour.