How would you like your eggs?

It’s a Sunday today, and ideally my Sunday reads like this: S-L-O-W...

Everything moves at a leisurely pace of 5 miles per hour but that’s the way I like my Sundays though admittedly it doesn’t always happen this way.

And so, as these opportunities come by far and few in between, I thought I’d take the opportunity to make some eggs. I love eggs for breakfast. I love them in any way: scrambled, sunny side, poached, soft-boiled, omelettes. I love it when you stay in hotels and they have egg stations at the breakfast buffet, and you can have your eggs in whatever way you want. Today I decided to go British, i.e. soft boiled served with soldiers.

The egg bit was taken from a recipe by domestic goddess Nigella Lawson, whereas the soldiers were inspired by Welsh chef Stephen Terry.

Nigella has a luxurious version of soft boiled eggs in her book “Nigella Express” (a bit ironic seeing that I was thinking of slow Sundays). I say luxurious because her version calls for dollops of cream and a nice swirl of truffle oil on the eggs before immersing them into a spa-like hot bath. Even the name sounds luxurious: Oeufs en cocotte.

As for the soldiers, I thought I’d be adventurous and do Welsh rarebit which is, I suppose you could say, posh cheese on toast. I had watched Stephen Terry prepare Welsh rarebit rabbit on an episode of Great British Menu recently, which was a tongue-in-cheek culinary creation around the traditional Welsh rarebit but served on “toasts” made from rabbit. No kidding. It looked great. But I wasn’t on a quest to be on Great British Menu, and so I decided to stick to traditional toasts made out of bread instead, and found a recipe courtesy of the Cheese Society that used Guiness. It’s even better if you can make the rarebit a day in advance and let it set in the fridge, as it’d be easier to slice and spread for extra cheesy thickness.

So into the oven everything go, and 15 minutes later I’m sitting on my couch in my PJs slurping silky eggs on melted cheesy soldiers. Mmm... Leisurely eating for a lazy Sunday. Ask me again how I like my eggs done in the morning...




Links:
For eggs, see Nigella Lawson’s “Nigella Express” for Oeufs en Cocotte

For Welsh rarebit recipe, search www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes

For Stephen Terry’s version, follow this link: www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/welshrarebitrabbit_91191.shtml

Mum's the word

As this is my very first entry on my blog, I feel it fitting to dedicate this entry to the person who first taught me to cook: my mum.

I’d like to say that I have a different story from everyone else to tell, but I don’t.

You see, I was scouring the shelves of the cookery section in my local bookstore the other day, and realised that there are so many cook books dedicated to mothers and grandmothers. Each one has an anecdote or two about learning to cook while watching mother peel onions, or grandma kneading dough, or helping out in the family restaurant. And it struck me that everyone who has the appreciation for food and loves to cook all have a similar experience. And everyone is trying to capture a Kodak moment on the pages of these books, forever immortalising the memory of their loved ones and their recipes, with an almost certain fear that we will forget. Maybe we will, or maybe it is just that in a day and age of frozen meals and TV dinners and instant this-and-that, we have become less interested to ask our mothers for recipes, or to even pass it down to our own children. Maybe it is this fear that family food secrets will one day disappear that has driven people to write books or blogs about mum’s recipes. I completely empathise; I am one of those people.

Having said that, I am not about to start writing the recipe for best chicken stew, or perfect pigs’ trotters according to mum. I would however like to say that if it wasn’t because of her I wouldn’t have learnt how to hold a knife properly (I am left-handed, these things can be potentially fatal), or learn the art of “agaration” which is simply cooking by feeling, or how to achieve a perfectly smooth steamed egg. Lord knows how many times my mum had to pick up calls at odd hours (I am 7 hours apart from home) to entertain my questions on why my sauce didn’t turn out well, or how to boil soup or braise mushrooms. Her response has always been similar: “Girl ah, didn’t I tell you to write it down last time?” Yes ma, you did.

The point is my mum has made me into the cook that I am today. Likewise with all of us, we cook and eat the way we do today because of the matriarchs in our lives. I have bonded with my mum all these years over the preparation of countless dinners, telling her about school, life, boyfriends. The first time I told my mum I loved her was in the kitchen, peeling onions (perfect to hide the emotional tears that followed; blame the onion). Now I tell her as often as I can.

Maybe this is my Kodak moment but I daresay I’d be hard-pressed to find a better one. Ma, thanks for the cooking lessons, this one is for you.