those things

Here’s my first in a series of little things that make life better – the really good poached egg.

I used to be firmly in the corner of the omelet as the quintessential egg dish. I’m over that; it’s not that I don’t appreciate, or create, omelets of stature…and it’s sort of like the Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig question, no one is wrong, it’s merely taste. Here’s the big dif’ in my kitchen doings: I can stack the poached egg – I can’t stack the omelet. In fact, the ingredients for both are close relations but the poached rules. Let me take a second to give you the rundown:

The Making of the Egg – I’ll admit that after my initial self-training I bought one of those microwave egg poachers. They use them at Pneumatic in Reno (second best restaurant in my World) and I thought it might be the way to go. Unfortunately, it’s speed they’re after…their stuff is great but doesn’t translate to my kitchen. In the end, it wasn’t one of my greatest ideas. I even disown the poached egg little metal dish/rack, removable kalidesoscope-y pan with inserts used on the stovetop. I’m much more freeform; I can do four eggs at a time in our shallow saucepan. Each egg starts in a very small glass bowl and is slowly poured into a very lightly roiling pan with a dash of white wine vinegar. The whites bunch up nicely, a bit hippie-ish if you must know, and the final eggs are dragged out with a slotted spoon. A minute to rest on a saucer, a dash of S&P, and hungry mouths to feed await.

The Making of the Stack – Here’s the real fun on Sunday AMs. This harkens back to the list of the 12 essential foods. Last Sunday was thus: toasted slices of rather big Italian bread, scallion hummus, big slices of roasted eggplant (done the night before), sliced vine-ripened tomatoes, and big patches of goat cheese. All of that got a blast under the broiler while the eggs finished. The eggs went onto the melted goat cheese, followed by spoonfuls of romesco, fresh Italian parsley, and a palmful of pinenuts.

So that’s what I pitch across the table at X (the frenchpress coffee is already half gone). She takes the knife…the fork…she cuts into the stack. A well-done poached egg will make you cry; that cut leads to the perfect stream of yolk running through the food. All the flavors mixed-and-matched, all the goodness scrapped up and gobbled down. It’s the egg; simple fantasy.

I'm back home.

T.