Eggs

If you have an egg in the house you have a meal. No truer phrase has been spoken; however, I think I would have to add ‘wonderful and delicious’ to that statement. In years gone by in Australia, the egg was mainly confined to the breakfast table. As we now know, it is delicious at all times of the day, whether as the main player in a dish or as a sidekick in a great salad.

An egg mainly consists of yolk and white, and, of course, a shell. Though both the white and yolk are protein, they set at slightly different temperatures, the white at about 60°C (140°F) and the yolk at 65–70°C (149–158°F). This allows us to set the white and still maintain a runny yolk, which is an integral part of many good salads, not to mention boiled eggs and toast soldiers. The white is made up of two parts, a thick white substance that surrounds the yolk and the thinner, more liquid part on the outside, closest to the shell. It is this part that flies away and becomes wispy when you are poaching an egg, and the bad news is that the older the egg, the larger that part becomes. In general, you should cook eggs gently because of the low setting point of protein, otherwise they will easily become rubbery, especially the whites when shallow-frying.