My local cafe owner doesn’t ask you how you like your eggs: he asks where you like them. “Cheers or cheers?” he said, order in hand. I look at him. “It’s a thing,” he explained. “Some people want eggs to soften their toast. Others hate runny toast and want eggs.”
Credit: Simon Leitch
We all have a soft spot for eggs, whether it needs a runny yolk — or it even twitches when you slice it so it falls off your chair and passes out.
Alfred Hitchcock was known to have a soft spot for them. “I’m afraid of eggs,” he once told a reporter. “Have you ever seen anything more repulsive than a cracked egg yolk and a yellow liquid?”
Replace the word “revolt” with the word “honorable”, thanks. Some people think that an omelette is an omelette only if the whites are crisp and the yolks are set, which I find abhorrent. Fried eggs should be covered and cooked over low heat so that the yolks are not wrinkled, and the yolks are very subtly glazed until almost opaque while remaining runny. On the cloudy side, so to speak.
I also love hard boiled eggs and need to cook them in a very specific way so I can cut them in half for egg salad sandwiches.
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Double slicing, reducing them to tiny pebbles, is a technique I haven’t patented yet. First, you put the egg in the egg cutter, lower the guillotine and slice it, then carefully rotate the whole egg 90 degrees in its holder, then lower the guillotine again. For bingo, use small dice to stir in mayonnaise, parsley, sea salt, and pepper. You’re welcome.
My wife, on the other hand, cuts half the whites from her hard-boiled eggs: “It’s all about the yolk-to-white ratio,” she says.
One of the reasons we might develop more things about eggs is cost. I buy EBL (extra large bloody) eggs for $12 a dozen because I trust the quality, taste, and the farm they come from. So all my weird and nitpicking little tricks are just a way to make each count.
