Most weeks I look through the Sunday New York Times. Notice
I do not say that I read the paper,
because that would be excruciatingly slow and painful. But I read little
snippets and pursue those that pique my interest. I can read the short ones on-line
with my large monitor, and Barry reads some of the longer ones to me. Actually,
reading to me is something he has done for years; I can still remember listening
to Barry read Franny and Zooey (J.D. Salinger) and The Art of Loving
(Erich Fromm) to me during our undergraduate days.
Sometimes he reads me the “Eat” column, often written by
Mark Bittman, who is the author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple
Meatless Recipes for Great Food. A few weeks ago the column was titled “Get
Cracking,” and focused on recipes using hard boiled eggs, with the following
instructions for boiling the eggs:
MASTER
HARD-BOILED-EGG RECIPE Choose a pot that will comfortably hold all the
eggs you plan to cook. Add the eggs, cover with cold water by 2 inches and put
the pot over medium heat. Bring to a gentle boil, turn off the heat and cover
the pot; the average large to extra-large egg will be ready in 9 minutes.
Transfer the eggs to a large ice bath for about a minute; crack, peel and eat,
or refrigerate for up to a week.
I ripped out the two pages and left it in the kitchen in
Riverdale, after which I more or less forgot about it. But today I was in the
kitchen and noticed a pile of papers in which this was included. Having a fresh
carton of eggs, and heeding the old adage that there is no time like the
present, I made my attempt. However, mindful of another old adage that old
habits die hard, I was plenty nervous.
A slight detour is in order. I used the term adage to refer to the sayings “there is
no time like the present” and “old habits die hard.” But in looking for sources
for these two phrases, I see that they tend to be called idioms rather than adages.
That led me to explore the definitions of these two terms.
Adage:
a proverb or short
statement expressing a general truth.
Idiom:
a group of words
established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the
individual words
It looks to me that either word could be appropriate, so I
am going to stick with “adage” here because it more appropriately captures the
way I think about these two phrases.
So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? That is a quandary
for another day. The question for today is “how did the eggs come out?”
Very well! This was an experiment, and not wanting to waste
too much food, I made just two eggs. The recipe above calls for large or extra-large
eggs and specifies that they should sit for 9 minutes; I was using jumbo eggs
and left them for 11 minutes. I then put them in an ice bath and, when they were
cool, put them in the refrigerator. I was anxious to see them but wanted to
wait until Barry came home.
The first egg I pulled out had cracked and was a bit stubborn
to peel. But the second egg peeled like a charm. I had forgotten what Mark
Bittman said about peeling, but maybe just by chance I did this with the second
egg:
There are countless “tricks” to peeling hard-
boiled eggs: pricking the shell with a pin before cooking, rolling on a counter
to crack every bit of shell, doing a prayer dance. The key, though, is that
ice-water bath, followed by cracking them against the countertop and starting
to peel from the wider end, where there is usually an air pocket.
What was missing was the dark green you often
see around the yolk. The yolks were just a beautiful shade of yellow. So the next time you hard boil eggs, try this approach!
On an entirely unrelated topic, Julia Collins continues to
win at Jeopardy: we just watched her win her 18th game with a total
of $391,600 in winnings.
Be well, all.
Love,
Rebecca
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