Fried Eggs (or Low Bars are My Favorite) - Mariam

 

Let me begin with, I'm sick. I've just slept for 14 hours and could probably sleep for some more. Let me also add, I know how to fry an egg. 

This segues into my next point. I doubt I've followed a recipe to the letter in my life and I feel that after 37 years, it is unlikely, I will begin now. I just...can't. 

So I chose fried eggs because I'm sick but must eat and also, if I'm going to try and cook something not in my usual way, it better be for five minutes. I can't keep that up for a few hours. 

Actually I couldn't even keep it up for a minute. The recipe called for straining the egg through a mesh strainer to get rid of the wispy egg whites so you get a perfectly shaped fried egg. I'm still shook by this wastage. I was trained to swipe the inside of the shell with a thumb to get it all out??? 

So yeah, skipped that. This recipe calls for basting the egg in olive oil. The author said he first saw this method in Spain. I first saw this method in Pakistan. The internet suggests this method is pretty ubiquitous.

You heat your pan, add in a smallish pool of olive oil, crack in your egg, and once it begins to crisp on the edges, you tilt the pan, use a spoon to scoop up your hot oil and and drizzle it over the whites to cook it. 

It should start looking like this:

Once the whites look cooked all the way through, season with salt and pepper. 

I like to have something green with breakfast, usually so I also had sliced avocado sprinkled with salt, black pepper, and garlic powder, some toast on the side, and chai. 

Thoughts on the recipe:

 I never use this method because it uses so much oil and it takes a lot of hands-on work. (Like 2 minutes as opposed to 30 seconds. I am most efficient in life.) Usually, I use a neutral oil (I save the olive oil for better meals than sick day breakfast) and the water and fat method because I prefer my yolk to look more cooked. I actually only recently started eating eggs by themselves and if I don't do it right, I won't like them again. 

That being said, I liked the crisp from the olive oil and it was fun doing the basting. The egg tasted like an egg. 

Thoughts on this blog:

We don't have many rules for this blog. All of us know how to cook pretty decently so I think maybe this cookbook is a bit basic for us. Probably, because we all three are scientists, the science part appealed to us. Possibly it will fill gaps we didn't know we had. Possibly, I'm the most type B scientist of the group and since I think pulse vortexing and pipet mixing are virtually the same thing, I shall likely be cooking like that as well. That said, I will try and follow techniques that I normally dismiss for the sake of the experiment. I will substitute halal ingredients for the haram ones and skip them if I can't find a substitute. If I find it wasteful, I will probably skip that step also. Maybe I will add more rules or exceptions as I go. 

I don't necessarily want to go viral, but one Nora Ephron movie WOULD retire us all, I'm just saying. What we need is a romance, but the man of my dreams doesn't need his heart earned by my cooking. Ah well, we shan't be saved from the corporate slog today, but I won't give up this hope. 

Next,

poached eggs?