If you’re trying to do anything else at the same time, especially the manifold demands of the full English breakfast, disaster is likely. But with unceasing attention and quite a lot of butter, you can produce a dish that is luxurious in both taste and texture. It is one of the few items where the amateur can achieve three-star finesse – or nearly. I must admit that Michel Roux’s formulation incorporating crab and asparagus tips, which I sampled once at his reataurant in Bray, has the edge on my version. ‘There are two schools of scrambled egg,’ explained Roux. ‘My brother Albert does his for hours in a bain-marie. I do mine over very low gas using a diffuser. His are still half-cooked when mine are finished. Less than three eggs in scrambled egg and you get nothing. Five or six are best.’
My decision not to use a diffuser was assisted by my inability to find the damn thing in our kitchen cupboard. Not that the lowest possible heat is always regarded as a sine qua non. In a heretical deviation, Roux’s nephew Michel Roux Jr, who is chef at Le Gavroche in Mayfair, dispenses with both diffuser and tiny flame. He recommends ‘a medium to high heat’ in his recipe for ‘the perfect creamy scrambled eggs’. It goes to show that there is no golden rule for a great scramble.
My in-depth research into scrambled eggs was curbed by Mrs H’s concern for my arteries. I would have tried Ian Fleming’s recipe – his obsession with scrambled eggs is indicated by their repeated appearance as James Bond’s breakfast – but requiring six ounces of butter and twelve eggs, it is as potentially lethal as Bond’s Walther PPK. Along similar lines, the scrambled egg recipe from the surrealist Francis Picabia in The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook calls for eight eggs and half a pound of butter. ‘Not a speck less,’ insists Toklas, ‘rather more if you can bring yourself to it.’ Since the result is described as having ‘a suave consistency that perhaps only gourmets will appreciate’, Mrs H’s prohibition was not too painful.
I had better luck with ‘Portuguese-style scrambled eggs’, one of the variations proposed by Michel Roux. Currently the Sunday breakfast de choix at Hirst HQ, it is a good dish to make if you happen to have some meat stock in reserve. (Years ago, I saw a tip in a newspaper about storing concentrated stock in plastic ice-cube bags in the freezer. Aside from being a bit fiddly to achieve – you tend to end up with a lot of stock on the floor – and the tendency of the frozen cubes to get lost in the freezer, it’s a fine idea.) The scrambled eggs are served in a soup plate topped with a sprig of grilled cherry tomatoes and fringed by a narrow moat of warm stock. Serve with buttered toast. Mrs H’s response is most satisfactory. ‘Simply fantastic. It’s the very best sort of brasserie food. Just the thing to revive an ailing spirit. Perfect for a late breakfast on a Sunday.’
A dish called scrambled eggs Clamart, which incorporates a sprinkling of fresh peas, sliced mangetouts and sweated lettuce, elicited a similar reaction from Mrs H. ‘Yum,’ she said, bestowing top gastronomic marks. ‘Sweet and crunchy. A perfect spring lunch.’ The only drawback is that it is a bit of a faff to do. You cook the peas and mangetouts separately, refresh in cold water, then reheat for twenty seconds before adding to the scrambled eggs with the sweated lettuce. In order not to break the unremitting attention required during the scrambling phase, this requires some deft before-and-after work. By the end, the lettuce isn’t the only thing that is sweated.
I came across a robust hybrid in The Perfect Egg and Other Secrets by the designer Aldo Buzzi (oddly, the book does not contain much about eggs). Scrambled eggs Frankfurt-style is described as ‘more Olympian, Goethe-esque’ than the standard scrambled egg. This is pretty heady stuff at breakfast time, but I gave it a bash. You are directed to use one egg per person and one for the pan. They are whisked with a teaspoonful of water for each egg. Buzzi directs the reader to cook the eggs in ‘well-browned butter’ over a very low heat. A frying pan seemed to be the best utensil for this, since you have to ‘use a spatula to gently move the part that is setting while you make the still liquid part run on to the hottest part of the pan’. Turn off the heat when the eggs have achieved a very light set. The result is a cross between an omelette and scrambled eggs, though lighter and more liquid and glistening than either of them. I followed Buzzi’s suggestion of blending in ‘well-cooked pepper and tomatoes, in which case what you’ll have is a sort of Basque piperade’.
Mrs H was quite taken with it, though her praise came with reservation. ‘The tomatoes are nice and fresh, the peppers quite peppery. You’ve managed to capture the omelette-style scramble. Certainly worth bearing in mind for future, except…’
‘Yes?’
‘It might be better for supper than at seven thirty in the morning.’
Poacher’s pockets
After two decades of making poached eggs for Mrs H, I came to a sudden realisation. She can’t poach for toffee. I mean real poaching with eggs in a pan rather than using an egg poacher. She admits it herself. ‘My poached eggs are always rotten compared to yours. Don’t know why. One of the great mysteries of life.’
This is an unfortunate culinary omission considering the many admirable applications of the poached egg, a dish that provides its own sauce in a sachet. Hence the word ‘poach’, from the French poche (pocket). What could be nicer or simpler than poached eggs on buttered toast? They’re also splendid in a warm salad and in eggs Benedict, which happens to be one of Mrs H’s specialities. This is when the egg poacher makes an appearance.
Though some of us might look on this as cheating, it was a method advocated by Mrs Beeton. ‘To poach an egg to perfection is rather a difficult operation,’ she wrote. ‘So for inexperienced cooks, a tin egg-poacher may be purchased, which greatly facilitates this manner of dressing eggs.’ People in ancient Rome must have felt the same. A drawing of cooking equipment from Pompeii includes two utensils that look very much like egg poachers (one for four eggs, another for twenty-eight).
My objections to using the poacher involve danger (you are likely to scald your fingers when you remove the little pans from the saucepan), taste (the white of the steamed or buttered egg lacks the pleasing texture of a naturally poached white) and aesthetics. The perfectly round steamed egg is industrial in appearance. It is the kind of egg you get on an Egg McMuffin.
When I imparted my critique to Mrs H, she responded with a delicate yawn. She also pointed out that she never got scalded by the egg poacher because she has the gumption to turn off the gas before removing the egg, unlike others she could mention. However, she agreed that my orthodox version of the poached egg had the edge. Moreover, she expressed willingness to learn.
This reversal of our usual relationship in the kitchen did not prove to be a very happy experience, though we managed the first step of boiling a pan of water without dispute or mishap.
‘Get up a good boil,’ I pontificated, ‘then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer – no bubbles – and break an egg into a cup so we can gently introduce it into the water.’
‘What sort of cup?’
‘Just a cup.’
‘But what kind?’
‘What do you mean what kind? A cup from Buckingham Palace! Just get any old cup. Why are you so concerned about cups?’
What she was meaning, it turned out, was the size of cup. When I snatched down a half-pint mug, Mrs H rejected it and used a ramekin to introduce her egg into the water.
‘Aren’t you supposed to stir the water round so it forms a funnel for the egg?’
‘My funnels never last long enough. Just pour your egg in.’
After doing this, she peered sadly into the pan. ‘My egg is like a rolling blanket of fog. I told you it would spread.’
‘Never mind. Just get it out after four minutes.’
‘What with?’
‘I usually use the large slotted spoon.’
‘Where’s that?’