Cradock - Eggs, brains, communications and pay television channels have something in common. They all get scrambled.
In a brain or in communications, being scrambled is not a desirable thing. The first means you don’t have the nous to understand whatever it is that’s boggling your mind. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re dim. It could just mean that the complex scientific poser you’ve been presented with is more suited to a Stephen Hawking than to the average mind. Or it could be that you’re dim.
In satellite broadcasting, scrambling a picture is tantamount to holding somebody to ransom, withholding the broadcasting service from them if they haven’t paid up. You might like to think that an honour system would be less mean, but I guess it would be just too easy for the corrupt of morality to take advantage. But honour systems are interesting: the rule of thumb seems to be that if you put an honour system in place and tell people clearly about it, the act of telling them holds an inherent expectation that they will do the right thing. And most of us will pay up, honouring the belief and faith another human being has shown in us.
There’s no doubt the world would be a better place if everything worked like this; if we all acted on trust in all matters. But that’s a Utopia nobody will ever know.
You can scramble a brain yet it will be capable of being unscrambled when given a poser it can deal with. You can unscramble a communication by rewording it or composing it in a more comprehensible way. You can unscramble a pay-TV picture if you’re the service provider and the culprit has paid his subscription.
But you cannot unscramble an egg, any more than you can unbake a cake, unroast a chicken or unspice a curry. The Word Monster (that’s the sneaky little urchin who lurks in your computer and draws red lines under words it does not recognise) has drawn red lines under “unbake”, “unroast” and “unspice” because they are not real words, I have made them up.
But words only come into existence when you have a need to use them, and I need to use them here to make my point that things cannot in fact be unspiced, unbaked or unroasted, and if the Word Monster cannot reread the previous sentence and grasp the necessity for using those words, maybe its brains are scrambled.
Interestingly, when used in the past tense, Word Monster saw fit not to underline unbaked, so maybe his brains are fried as well as scrambled. Or maybe he read it as sunbaked. Or maybe Word Monster is actually cleverer than I am giving him credit for and knows that a dish which has not yet been baked is as yet unbaked, rather than it having been unbaked once it’s been baked. And if your brains are not scrambled after all that, the dunce hat is not for you today.
Which brings us to the topic of this week’s meander through the fathomless canals of the maverick food writer’s as yet unscrambled mind: scrambled eggs. Oh, and look, Word Monster has allowed us to write unscrambled, because Word Monster has had the sense to note that I am not suggesting one should unscramble an egg.
This is one of those simple dishes that has the potential to delight the palate with its sensuous textures, its creaminess and, if made well and simply, its flavour. But scrambled eggs can be plain and boring if you don’t take some trouble and give it some thought while you’re preparing it.
You need few things but the most important elements are a hot pan, fresh eggs, butter, and a fork.
As with an omelette, this needs to be ready to serve as soon as the eggs are cooked, so everything else should have been done before you slide the beaten eggs into the frying pan.
CHEESY SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH HERBS
2 Tbs salted butter
3 garlic chive leaves
3 or 4 mint leaves, picked
2 young rocket leaves, picked
2 Tbs grated Cheddar
3 large free range eggs
Toast wedges, buttered
Salt to taste
Lay out all your ingredients before you put the frying pan on the heat: have butter ready to go in the pan.
Chop the chives, mint leaves and rocket finely after you have picked the mint and rocket as you don’t want to use the stems. Grate the cheese. Whisk the eggs in a bowl.
Toast the bread, trim the edges, cut into quarters and place on the plate.
Put the pan on the heat. I use a moderately hot temperature, number 4 on my stove. Any higher than this and they can still be cooked quickly but they may not be as creamy as they could be. Also don’t brown the butter unless you’re looking for that burnt butter flavour in your scrambled eggs.
Add the butter when the pan is hot, and pour in the beaten eggs as soon as all the butter is melted.
Immediately add the chopped herbs and grated Cheddar, and use a fork to work the eggs briskly. While they are still moist – do not let them overcook and dry out – spoon on to the plate and garnish with herbs. Salt lightly to taste.
This recipe is for one serving (unless you’re feeling mean), so double or triple up as necessary.
Don’t feed it to Word Monster.
Weekend Argus