For perfect poached eggs, you need very fresh eggs. You can add vinegar to the water, get it swirling into a little whirlpool, do whatever you like, but you won’t get perfect poached eggs without very fresh eggs. Fresh eggs cook in one little mound with the white all staying together and a yolk that is high and has a glaze of white over it. The white sets while the…
If you want to be voted best cook ever by a five-year-old, give them a bowl of warm mandarin curd and a spoon. It’s not exactly a balanced breakfast but it’s high protein, low sugar and pretty healthy, and oh so good.
There is no rule against using a timer though to train your superpower. The trouble is that how long an egg takes to cook to perfection depends on the size of the egg. The little eggs from the Australorp bantams I have at the moment take just over three minutes from boiling water to white all set and yolk just starting to set, the way I like them.
I have a theory that bitter tastes are often acquired tastes, because bitter foods are usually either medicinal or poisonous. So natural selection would favour tasters who were very tentative and cautious at first, but if there were no adverse effects, decided they really liked the flavour.
This is a recipe for people who like their chocolate dark, who like expresso coffee and olives and beer and marmalade.
This is porridge to convert non-porridge eaters!
I saw an episode of Jamie Oliver’s American Food Revolution, where they were teaching people to cook corn on the cob with chili and lime. The flavour combination inspired these. They work really well.