MISS DELIA Smith has a new 'secret' pro- ject. She
is to publish a book, and engage in a 22-part television series to teach the masses how to cook. The project will go back to basics. Apparently many of us know about Thai stir-fries but not how to boil an egg. May I make a modest suggestion to Miss Smith on the egg-boiling business? It is that her back-to-basics approach should start not at the beginning — 'Take one egg' — but at the end. It should look at the dis- asters which occur, and then correct their causes.
Picture an English breakfast. The table is nicely laid, bread cut, toasted, buttered and cut into soldiers or battleships, eggs cooked just right, plonked in egg-cups and covered with cosies, some in the shape of chickens' heads, the others dwarves or with the ini- tials of family members colourfully embroi- dered on the side. The toast and eggs come to table. They must, of course, be eaten immediately. If not, the toast will cool, the soldiers sag at their posts instead of stand- ing erect, the eggs also cool and go past their best.
But where are the children? They are not at table. According to the Exeter University Health Education Survey, they are in the bath. Actually, they are in the bathroom in the shower, or trying to get into the bath- room which is barred against them by their sister. Modern children shower every day. They are obsessed with sluicing. They also get up too late. Showers take precedence, in their perverted scheme of values, over boilies. Result: ruined breakfast; 'My egg's cold/My toast is soggy.'
Now you are beginning to see just how complex this boiled egg thing is. Good boiled eggs are impossible without a very well brought up, time-disciplined and possi- bly slightly less than pristine family. It is not always the young people's fault, it might be father with his nose in the sports pages, but disaster it will be. Disaster one is the butter that won't spread because it has not been taken out of the fridge early enough. Attempts to do so plough up the toast and soldiers can't be cut.
Disaster two comes with the salt and pepper. The breakfaster makes a mound of judiciously mixed salt and pepper on the side of his egg plate. He then taps and peels or slices his egg, dips the spoon in the condiments and sprinkles it on the egg. The first mouthful: delicious. Back he goes with his spoon to the mound for a second go. This time, however, the spoon is moist either with saliva or egg yolk inadequately sucked off. The pepper and salt form into a lump which sticks to the spoon. When he flicks it, it either goes somewhere it shouldn't or falls into the egg. He must then hunt for it, ploughing the egg into a sodden mess so that he can divide and reallocate it. A similar disaster can occur when peeling is done carelessly or slicing done too aggressively. Then it is shell which has to be excavated. As with disaster one the egg is cold by the time it is finally eaten.
Disaster three goes back a bit in the pro- cess and is mother's fault. She has so con- centrated on what she thinks are the basics, buying the right sort of egg and timing its cooking, that she has forgotten apparent trivia. She might absent-mindedly put out serrated knives. These, used to slice, will shatter the shell; more excavation work. She might not have cosies big enough for the large eggs. She might use fresh or thinly cut and under-toasted bread for the sol- diers; they will then break or crumble into the egg or down someone's clean blouse or tie. It is very likely, in these vulgar days, that she will assume she can get away with using teaspoons instead of egg-spoons. Egg-spoons have a wide end; you can load them up more fully without risk of spillage or seepage out the side round the mouth and a consequent dissolution of authority and order in the office.
All these disasters do indeed ruin the joy of good egg and toast eaten at the precise moment when it should be. And we have not mentioned yet more obvious ones. About 99 per cent of the population do not, as they must, get their eggs straight from someone who keeps chickens and ducks. Contrary to what is so often said, eggs do not have to be day-fresh. Better a five-day- old egg from the right source than a day- fresh egg from the wrong one. You have to go to source to find out what the hens and ducks are eating. But we have been through all this before.
What is crucial is to understand that even as simple a meal as a boiled egg requires meticulous good habits on the part not only of the cook but of the eaters as well. The great boiled egg requires not so much tech- nique as character. Do you, do the masses, have it?
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