What better way to start a blog than with a piece about the humble egg. The primordial symbol of new beginnings.
The ones I am enjoying at the moment I discovered at my local greengrocer in Hampstead. They swiftly achieved cult status in our household… this is because they are basically freaks of nature, albeit natural and very delish ones: They are double yolkers! “How do they manage to get those?” I hear you ask. Well I DID ask and apparently a fresh and plucky young rooster is introduced to the flock at regular intervals, which, much as Beatles fans might have thrown their underwear on stage in paroxysms of lust, causes the hens to go all libidinous and fertile and provokes intensified ovulation resulting in double egg sacks in their gorgeous eggs. ==> I had to revise this last piece of info as I asked my farmer of H G Witt and Son, at the Parliament Hill Farmer’s Market and apparently there is a much less romantic answer. Around 5-7% of conceptions are twins, these result in larger eggs and they are visible and selectable simply by virtue of their size. This farmer does the most wonderful raw milk, the best actually (see here). Anyway… Each egg is quite frankly, HUGE, which makes a real feast of eggs and soldiers in our house. They are from Haresfield Farm and are not their regular extra large organic free range eggs. They have a special red XL label. Anyway, all this to say that we have a bit of an eggs-n-soldiers obsession – somewhat fuelled by this new egg-eating experience: instead of an unsatisfying couple of stabs at a little egg swiftly resulting in a pile of dry crusts and no more interior unctiousness, these eggs are quite literally a wholesome and creamily delicious meal in themselves.
What more can I say? Any other eggs disappoint me in their scantiness and brevity.
My father, who is spritely for almost 80 years of age is still convinced that eggs should be rationed due to their cholesterol, a mindset drilled in hard throughout the 80s and 90s – along with hang-ups about “low fat” and “sugar free”, but I think it is safe to say that our global nutritional knowledge has moved far beyond, with once innocent players on the breakfast buffet having finally been unveiled after masquerading as our friends for so long as the worst offenders.
I have even nerdily weighed these jumbo eggs on my digital kitchen scales because I felt compelled to know really just how big they are. Any guesses? 
Well the average egg, like these delicious sky-blue Clarence Court free range eggs (which I buy for cooking and for their most extraordinarily beautiful sunset orange yolks which I like to display in scrambled eggs) weigh generally between 50-60g. These brutes however weigh in at about 100g each!
We devour them sprinkled with Maldon and mopped up with generously buttered Flour Power City Bakery Pumpernickel Rye tin loaf or the E5 Bakehouse’s Wholemeal Miche Loaf which is satisfylingly, both coarsely jagged and deliciously chewy.
Sometimes, if I have a really dreadful school run in the morning, I try and re-civilize myself when I get home by elevating this breakfast with just a drizzle of some white truffle oil from Tartufo and Friends. The crystalline structure of the Maldon, the velvet truffle depth and the creme anglaise texture of the egg’s interior is a culinary hattrick to me.
With a spouse who works from home I might add that this works as our weekly breakfast date over which we plan our week, catch up on newspaper articles with each other by reading aloud our favourites and generally take a breather in the absence of our kids.
Now down to the technicalities… For those of you who have never cracked the perfect boiled egg, this is my version of a very clear set of guidelines from Heston Blumenthal that I stumbled upon a few years ago in a weekend Times supplement. For years despite being a competent cook I had a real hit-and-miss rapport with the humble boiled egg, which I found galling. The process is simple to execute but doesn’t take long and the devil is really only in the detail and quite inevitable if you give in to any distraction that interferes with your clock-watching. I have often splurged my precious double-yolkers on an inadvertent egg-salad due to a packed lunch-making or book bag hunt taking my mind away from the pan of a morning. So:
Choose the most compact pan you have for the number of eggs you have to boil – basically the less free water around the eggs, the more predictable the result of your time-keeping.
Since my mornings are chaos, for speed I like to fill a pan with already boiling water from my boiling water tap and then set it on the stove and then bring it back to the boil for a moment to ensure the eggs are truly going straight into bubbling boiling water or else the prep loses momentum and the timing goes a little wrong. This makes it easier to cook them consistently time and again.
I prick the eggs if they are more than a couple of days old otherwise they often crack and the white oozes out and the cooking time reduces so you end up with some overcooked and some undercooked eggs. I use an ancient German egg pick or “egg pricker” (the Germans are the best at soft-boiled eggs – maybe it is their precision? – I’d venture they’re the best at breakfast in general).
I spoon the eggs gently in to the bubbling water packing the eggs together – sometimes even going so far as to stand them upright against each other if I have more than 4 to fit in, then I slam on a lid and ensure they come swiftly back to boiling for the second time.
Now for the crucial bit:
As SOON as they come back to the boil, I turn the gas off and set my timer. For a jumbo egg like these double yolker chaps I have to count at least 4 minutes for a perfect soft boil – by which I mean softly set white and viscous yolk, no runny bits. However some individual eggs, just like humans, are longer and slimmer and others more spherical so I tend to pull the smallest one out first to test “doneness”. This is the safest tactic – to assume that once overcooked it can’t be uncooked and if underdone and still watery in places you can bring it “to” with its own residual heat by putting its little “lid” back on. Since there are of course two yolks, I puncture them both by inserting the tail of a spoon all the way through to the bottom, and stir. This ensures each egg cooks evenly without hard-boiled bits forming. If you are boiling a standard 60g egg I find, depending on their shape, that 3 minutes is the optimum time but I review and revise as nature obliges.
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