Scary Boiled Eggs

How many ways are there of cooking an egg?

This morning I did my first omelette, complete with bacon bits and cheese.  It worked fine, thank goodness, despite my little non-stick pan feeling rough after I've used it for lots of poached eggs.  I have just ordered another, off my mate's highly successful www.onestopcookshop.co.uk.  

Yesterday I prepared Eggs Royale - toasted muffins with smoked salmon, poached eggs and hollandaise.  I also offer Eggs Florentine (with spinach) but not Benedict, as I don't always have cooked ham to hand.

Another speciality on our menu is the 'Wydemeet Special' - one egg made as an omelette, the other broken into it like a poached egg.  Nobody has asked for this yet, which is a shame, because it's a lot easier to prepare than it looks.

Most people ask for fried, poached or scrambled, even though I encourage everyone to ask for anything they can think of.

One of my guests, who was Thai/German/American, made a special request that I cooked his scrambled eggs 'properly'.  I was a touch insulted but didn't say anything.  The next morning I served him up what I considered properly cooked scrambled - soft and rich - and of course I had totally misunderstood him.  He meant 'well done'; and ordered 'hard easy-over' for the next morning.  I had to look that one up on Google.

Oddly, the most demanding thing anyone can order for breakfast is a boiled egg.  Did you see that episode of Gordon Ramsay laying into a chef, yelling: "You couldn't even cook a f..........g boiled egg!!" Well poor bloke.  They are very difficult to get right.  Especially here, because I cook on an Aga, and both plates are too hot to simmer water.  So I have to keep moving the pan around, which means that one minute it's boiling its head off and cracking the shell, and the next it's not boiling at all.

I have invested in various gadgets, including that pin-thing to let the air out, and a plastic oval thing which supposedly tells you whether the egg's inside is soft, medium or hard; but the main problem is that you simply can't see. I get butterflies every time I have to serve one, wondering what my guest is going to discover when they crack it open.

I have been conducting 'taste tests' for best eggs over the past few months; involving eggs from down the road, eggs from up the road, eggs from Mr Dumper, and eggs from Mum's neighbouring farmer.  For size, taste and value, I couldn't fault Mr Dumper's contributions, but now that he's history, Kind Neighbour's eggs are proving to be my mainstay.  They are large, rich, orange, and very fresh.  No one can fail with such eggs.  I have a lot of guests who say they can't make poached eggs, but they're easy if the eggs are fresh enough.  Even to get in and out of the pan!  

My aim these days is to produce poached and fried eggs so perfect that they look like pretend plastic ones.