venta

A personal achievement: last night I had a poached egg for tea.

It was round, correctly cooked, and coherent.

Me and poached eggs do not have a good history. I think I first attempted to cook them when somewhere with

davefish and

keris. It was not a success.

You get your pan of simmering water, crack an egg into it... and the egg immediately spreads around the pan into a stream of messy tendrils of albumen. I don't care what Delia says, this happens every time; the result is not my idea of a poached egg.

People have recommended stirring the water quickly so you're cracking the egg into a vortex. This, they say, will keep the egg a coherent shape. They lie.

Others recommend putting vinegar into the hot water. As far as I can tell, this doesn't work and it makes your egg taste of vinegar.

I bought a device called an egg poacher, which was like a diddy little ladle which hung over the edge of the pan. It did keep the egg coherent, but also made sure that the bottom was cooked solid and rubbery while the top was still runny.

Yesterday I experimented with a theory. I got my pan of water up to a simmer, and then I dropped a largeish biscuit-cutter into it. I cracked the egg so that it fell inside the biscuit-cutter. Bingo! My egg remained contained while it cooked. There was much rejoicing.

(I should note that you need a metal biscuit-cutter - the plastic ones float, and may not take kindly to being immersed in near-boiling water.)