Saturday, October 21, 2006

Saturday morning poachies


On Saturday mornings, I just love to make poached eggs on toast.
Apparently an egg is an easy thing to poach; however I have mis-poached many an egg. Sometimes if they are straight out of the fridge they tend to split when the yolks hit the pan, or sometimes I nick the yolk on the sharp shell edge and it starts oozing out into the clear white before I even get it NEAR the pan.
Then, of course, there was that unfortunate incident where I poached a very un-fresh egg. It looked OK until it hit the water, but then it kind of collapsed in on itself and turned a poxy pale yellow and bits of it disintegrated. Egg implosion.
However, all things considered, this morning's effort was a success. I used fresh eggs from Ricky's chooks (always makes for a winning poachy). I poached them in a shallow frying pan with a splash of white vinegar added to the water. (Some people swear by poaching in a saucepan: dropping the eggs into a small full saucepan of boiling water. I have done this before and it works. The eggs end up as a round, rather than flat, poachy.)
Meanwhile, I toasted a slice of Italian sourdough under the grill, and cut it in half. I drizzled the toast with a tiny bit of fruity olive oil, and put a slice of gypsy ham on each half. The poachies then sat on top of the ham. (You'll see from the picture that I accidentally poked a hole in one of the yolks as I lifted it out of the pan. Luckily it didn't burst). I had a small handful of baby spinach leaves on the side, and sprinkled the whole thing with fresh oregano leaves, Maldon salt and coarse-ground black pepper.
Delicious!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i need to try poaching to see if my skills are better than before...