Friday, November 12, 2010

Eggs, rice, and greens

Another simple lunch: broccoli raab and watercress stir-fried until wilted; leftover rice added and fried with the greens; soy sauce, sriracha, sesame oil; and an egg I call the unctuous egg.

The unctuous egg is all about technique:

Start with room temperature eggs, or warm them up by sitting them in a pot of very warm water for 5-10 minutes.

Bring a pot of water to a boil.  Reduce the heat enough to keep it barely simmering and add the eggs.  Simmer for 5-7 minutes.  Meanwhile, get a bowl of ice water ready.

After 5-7 minutes, remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and place them in the ice water.  Ideally, leave them for an hour before peeling.  The ice water stops the cooking faster than just draining the eggs will, but eggs retain heat for a surprisingly long time.

Peel the eggs - and in my case, serve one of them with your lunch immediately.  But typically you would now marinate the eggs, peeled, in something like soy sauce and sriracha, or diluted curry paste, or etc etc.

What this cooking technique does is give you a yolk that's smooth and creamy without being either runny or grainy - as you can see from mine, it either cooked closer to the 7 minute end or didn't cool down fast enough, because some of the yolk is light yellow around the edge instead of dark yellow-orange throughout.  That'll depend some on your egg, too.

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