Monthly Archives: April 2020

The perfect egg in a shell

Cooking

Doing it right.

This is one of an occasional series on cooking devices which make a difference. For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.

Few things are more satisfying than a properly cooked egg in its shell, be it soft or hard boiled.

The perfect soft boiled egg is a breakfast staple, but often overcooked and poorly presented. Further, it simply does not do to have hard boiled eggs in an egg cup. Decorum and civilization dictate that eggs in cups be soft boiled and runny. And proper presentation is essential to the whole aesthetic.

You can make these in a pot with boiling water but there are so many variables that your chances of consistent success are remote. Thus, an inexpensive tool is called for. Actually, several tools. Tools convert pretense about ‘art’ into the predictable results dictated by scientific method, the core tenet of all good cooking.

First is the egg maker shown at left. Typically holding up to seven eggs – always broad side down, please – this can be had from any number of vendors for under $20. Mine came with an unreadable, graduated plastic measure for determining the correct volume of water required. It was useless. You need a clearly marked, glass laboratory measure and a syringe to get soft boiled eggs right. The larger measuring cup is used for hard boiled eggs only.



Egg maker, large measuring cup, syringe and 250ml graduated measure.

The design of the egg maker is simplicity itself. Water is added to the platen which is then covered with the egg holder plate, eggs are added and the ‘greenhouse’ cover is put in place and the power turned on. The critical thing for a soft boiled, nicely runny egg is the volume of water and ‘critical’ is the right word. The volume of water used determines cooking time. The amount must be right to 5ml or the result will be unsatisfactory. After some experimentation I established that 4 eggs, straight from the refrigerator (forget the gobbledygook about letting them warm up – sheer nonsense) require exactly 175ml of water. That’s where the graduated measure and syringe come in, making accurate measurement of the required volume a simple matter. Your device may vary, so be prepared to experiment.

The key to consistent success is to remove all variables from the equation. Use the same sized eggs from the same source, stored at least overnight in the refrigerator for a consistent starting temperature. And be sure to use the exactly correct volume of water in the egg maker.

The egg maker will pop off after 3-4 minutes when the water has evaporated, thus setting off the thermostat, and you will have four soft boiled eggs. Four perfect soft boiled eggs, every time.

But you are not through.

Topping your eggs to access the runny goodness inside should never, never, never be done with a knife applied to the shell. You will bruise and crack the shell randomly and risk injury into the bargain. The result looks awful. Check the last image below. An egg is one of nature’s most perfect creations and it should be respected as such.

So purchase an ‘egg topper’ – search on those words at Amazon. Mine came in this set – it’s the stainless steel tool removed from its storage cut-out – along with properly sized and shaped spoons. The latter need to be small and slim to properly access the yolk without spillage. Your coffee spoon is not the answer.



Egg cup outfit with topper. The circumference of the topper’s cone acts as an impact cutter.

The cooked egg is placed, broad side down, in the cup and the tool is placed over the top. The sprung plunger, terminated with the alloy sphere, is retracted and released, whereupon it scores/cuts a perfect circular top on the egg shell. Mine has to be retracted only part way to avoid damage to the rest of the shell, (I marked the optimum retraction distance) and the tool must be carefully removed holding the base of the egg with a cloth. A little practice and you will get a perfectly scored shell top. Now get out that sharp knife – a thin fish boning knife is ideal – and slice through the albumen and flesh of the egg white along with the scored shell part. A properly designed cracker will score the shell just above the yolk. You now have the perfect soft boiled egg, along with high job satisfaction.



A perfectly topped egg along with obligatory bacon and home made Italian rosemary bread.

As for hard boiled eggs, these are trivial to prepare. Load up all seven if you like, add 1.7 fl.ozs. of water (or the quantity that experimentation indicates) using the large measuring cup in the first image, let the egg maker tool do its thing and you will have seven perfectly hard boiled eggs with none of that disgusting grey ring around the yolk your spouse creates as a result of over-cooking. Soak them in iced water for 5 minutes and you are ready to make salads of your choosing. I have found that the freshest eggs are also the easiest to peel when hard-boiled.

The water in my area has significant mineral deposits which make the egg holder plate and heated platen go a revolting brown after much use. Some medium stainless steel wool cleans things up nicely.



How not to do it. Albert Finney as Churchill eats his breakfast egg in ‘The Gathering Storm‘. Hacked off top and wrong tool use. Gustatory shortcomings notwithstanding, he did OK otherwise.

The winter of our discontent

Hall of Shame, Movies

Hopefully, history repeats.



“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York”

Those opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III are the most elegant and complex ever penned in English. Replete with metaphor, pun, humor and egotism, they say everything about the speaker, the future Richard III of England, a murderous psychopath whose two year reign came to a sticky end at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. That same battle saw the end of the Plantagenet and York dynasties.

America and the world is now confronted with a like psychopath and murderer, the abomination which occupies the Oval Office. The ‘T’ word, used in this household, is rewarded by a quick exit for the speaker, the front door shown with alacrity. Rather, the only acceptable usage is ‘Pig’, the preposition dropped as a nod to Pig’s appalling spouse, the Slovenian Slut, chest by Dow Chemical.

Why this mention of Richard III?

First, because hopefully history repeats and Pig gets his equivalent of Bosworth Field very soon. Richard’s dying cry of “My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse” will be equally apt in Pig language, with the sole change being that ‘horse’ is replaced with ‘lawyer’.

Second, because my son’s Shakespeare studies in his last semester as a senior at prep school are now focused on this finest of plays, one which reminds me of my teen years, for I am vicariously piggybacking on his work.

Those teen years saw me watching Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film of the same title, easily the most chilling performance committed to celluloid. And we will be watching it later this week, ever hopeful that Richard’s fall from his horse is emulated by Pig and his ‘dynasty’ of spawn:



Richard, with attendant sycophants. Look familiar?

You should watch it too.

A note to Pig voters: This blog is about Photographs, Photographers and Photography. It ordinarily eschews politics. However, at this time of national tragedy, a tragedy whose number of deaths has been compounded by a psychopath masquerading as President, it is every American’s duty to protest loudly and to work for regime change. If you voted for Pig last time and have come around to seeing the error of your ways, all well and good. We all make mistakes. However, if you still fall in the trap of believing that Pig is making America great again and propose voting for him again, not only are you emphatically not welcome here, your very presence disgusts me. Do the right thing. Go elsewhere with your stupidity, your ignorance and your bigotry.

Working a war economy

Hall of Shame, Photography

Use the army.



Wanted: 1.25 million delivery drivers.

The US Army comprises 1.3 million workers on the taxpayer’s tab. It costs $1 trillion (yes, that’s $1,000,000,000,000) annually and has not won a conflict in 75 years. Let’s get some value out of this otherwise useless labor.

Problem: Supermarkets are disease pits and the primary area for virus transmission. Unfortunately, they are essential to life and health. Most provide no protective clothing for employees and fail to even provide simple, inexpensive Lexan partitions between shopper and cashier. They must be closed and the model rethought.

Solution: Close all supermarkets, prohibit in-person shopping and require a ‘delivery only’ model for all US households.

Here are the statistics:

Households and available driver labor:
Households in US: 128mm
Soldiers in army: 1.3mm
Unemployed retail store workers: 500,000
Total available labor – using 80% of Army and all retail: 1,540,000

Vehicles available:
GM vehicle production 2019: 2,900,000
Ford vehicle production: 1,200,000
US army vehicles: 225,000
Conscript 3m of Ford and GM vehicle production: 1,025,000 available
Add US Army for a total of: 1,250,000 available vehicles

Unit data:
Workers per vehicle: 1.23

Put all supermarkets on a delivery only model, no customer visits to these disease pits permitted.

# of supermarkets in USA: 28,000

Drivers (army + retail) available to each supermarket: 55 drivers

Households per US supermarket: 4,570

Permitted weekly grocery orders per household: 1

Trips per driver per day: (4570/55/7) = 12

Conclusion:

By conscripting 80% of otherwise useless army labor (no cost increase – already paid for) and all laid off retail workers (to be paid by supermarkets – no cost to taxpayer) and dedicating these workers to driving delivery vehicles, the labor load per driver computes to just 12 deliveries per day to supply every household in the USA.

Interpersonal shopper:grocery store worker contact falls to zero. Drivers are tested for virus weekly, being the sole source of contact with shelf stackers, with body temperature checks daily. Drivers have zero contact with shoppers – ‘leave at door’.

Fire all cashiers, as stores are closed, and add them to the labor force too.

As for national defense, the last 75 years prove that the sole purpose of the US Army is offense, not defense, and it has had no successes in its offensive rôle. Under my model we still have 300,000 Army personnel left (not sure what they do, exactly) and the Navy and Air Force to deliver nukes if needed. And let’s recall that a nuclear submarine parked at the bottom of the Black Sea on Moscow’s doorstep is impregnable, and it carries 16 long range nukes.

T.

The source of all ills

Photographs

Pandemics all originate in the same place.

H2N2 – 1957 – Singapore and Hong Kong. 116,000 Americans dead.
H3N2 – 1968 – Hong Kong. 100,000 Americans dead.
H1N1 – 2009 – Asian pigs – 12,469 Americans dead.
Covid-19 – 2020 – Wuhan, China. 11,816 Americans dead. Total impossible to project.

CDC data.

I visited Hong Kong in 1995 on business, and our generous hosts saw to it that I took in their open air ‘wet’ markets which are the source of all the above pandemics. Live animals are stored in stacked wire cages where they defecate on one another, prior to being served up on a plate. The fellows showing me around took me to a high-end Chinese restaurant where, amongst the delicacies on the menu, there were three kinds of bird’s nest soup at $10, $100 and $1,000 a bowl. I kid you not. $1,000. The ‘IPO special’, I suppose. When you learn how this guano-infested delicacy is made you too would do what I did. Pass.

Here are some snaps from that visit:




Chinese artefacts awaiting illegal export.


Fans galore.


Last days of British rule which ended in 1997.


High end apartments.


More of the same.


Labor.


The clean end of town.


Goodness, but did I need a burger and coke on return to California.

The fix? Simple. A travel ban to and from these nations until verifiable permanent closure of the ‘wet’ markets is in effect. Otherwise, pandemics from these sources will recur with increasing frequency as travel rises.

All snaps on a Rollei 35, Kodachrome film.