Yes, but I live in busy hipster london, so there is huge amount of demand.

Wazz, mackerel is a fish right, so is this thin fillets or what for only 30g ? Is the cheese french chèvre (ie softer white like creamy) or greek feta (a bit more solid but breaks in pieces easily)?

It does look/feel promising/tasteful with plenty of cool things. Did you try it completely on your own or did you deviate from some other idea until it improved?

It's the stuff that comes in a tin with oil.

The cheese is chevre; can't imagine it working with feta. Quite soft, creamy in taste but not in texture.

Going through some testing and evolution; given the mackerel and goats' cheese is mixed in and sorta behaves like a thick sludge, there's not much texture to it. Thinking about lettuce to give it some crunch, and/or toasting the pine nuts and having them as a separate layer.

I'd been playing around with capers a little (I'm not really a good cook, huuuuge gaps in my knowledge) in a pasta sauce for a few days prior and the idea of mixing them specifically with mackerel and goats' cheese just came to me out of nowhere.

There is nothing that tastes better than eggs fried in bacon grease, especially for breakfast. All working class people know this well. Eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast washed down with hard tasting black coffee. This made America strong and mighty.

That's just great if you're good at frying eggs, which I'm not.

respectfully, unless you've been at the vermouth how can you fail to fry an egg correctly the vast majority of the time.

and zeno, like most of Americans is wrong on this, breakfast is with tea, especially when the breakfast is toast bacon and eggs, you can have whatever the **** you like with pancakes

The woman in the cafe near where I once lived was a wizard at it. It was the next level of fried eggdom.

Zeno gloriously forgot the hash browns!

Ok Charlie now you will experience the lengthier post about cooking fried eggs ever and it wont even cover omelets or scrambled eggs or boiled eggs lol. Lets say its devoted to all youngsters out there living alone for the first time lol.

Frying eggs is elementary easy. You put olive oil in the pan and turn the heat to the second to highest level and once the oil is hot enough (dont burn it, dont even take it too close to being very hot) you take the egg (or 2 of them is better one after the other) and hit it in the middle (the side not the top/bottom) in some 90 deg corner (eg the counter or the sink or the frying pan edge even lol. That breaks it a bit in the middle (but the egg is still one body) to then be able to take it with both hands and try to gently open it without breaking it in many pieces. Very gently proceed, 95% of the time it will work ok. If it doesnt, so be it, you will have a scrambled egg a bit, no big deal, others are starving (take out any shell pieces and proceed with cooking the "accident").

As you open gradually the slightly broken in the middle egg (each hand in each side, left and right, with say the 2 thumbs each side of the initial break and the rest of fingers holding the egg from the unbroken side below to control the pace of opening it/further breaking it, so that it doesnt break in random pieces and goes all over the place lol) the membrane ruptures and the egg shell further breaks and the interior egg content white and yolk still intact flows in the frying pan and due to heat instantly the white undergoes denaturation. You then take a spoon and catch some hot oil from the other areas of the pan and release/throw it gently on top of the yolk area. You add a bit of salt and redo the oil from spoon thing 20-25 times until the top side is white also like the rest around it. Unless you want it sunny side up and visible like Zeno's. Then you do nothing after you released the egg in the pan. You may even use very little oil film or what Zeno did, left over grease which is audacious with attitude lol for all health sensitive people like your mother's partner.

After you have managed to get it to look white you turn off the heat and let it cook a bit more like 2-3 minutes and then take it out (or as much needed to look solid enough). You catch it gently with a fork and balance it safely and place it in the plate or you can use a slotted spoon for safety to avoid balancing accidents (ie like dropping the egg before you take it to the plate, creating a mess or dropping/breaking the yolk inside the oil pan which is ridiculous lol). If you have cooked french fries before you can turn off the heat after taking out the fries and use the left over hot oil in the pan to cook the egg as the oil temperature drops and its still pretty hot. That makes for a very fine light cooking of the egg that doesnt burn it at all and still solidifies it for the most part inside but still leaves a little bit of it liquid so that you can put some bread to it if you want later at your dish.

masque, when you fall at the very first hurdle it's not going well

Eggsactly, dereds.

Fried eggs are to be cooked in butter or bacon fat. Eggs are to be broken on a flat surface by striking them hard enough to break both the shell and the membrane and NEVER on a 90 degree angled surface unless you enjoy picking shell out of the egg with your nasty nasty fingers. Eggs are to be cooked until barely done, which means when frying a TOTAL of two minutes on the stove (eggs should be removed from the heat prior to being completely opaque) if you like eating good food and three minutes if you are going to use the fried eggs in lieu of mortar in your next construction project.

What on earth, i never have any accidents as i described it. Literally (in the sense nothing ever is a throw away failure or unsatisfactory eating). 95% works perfect. If i have a 5% "failure" rate it is because a piece of shell dropped if the egg proved very hard to open due to not ideal initial break or random bad rupture of the membrane, that can be easily removed with a fork leaving nothing there. If the yolk breaks which is the other part of that 5% you get a slightly scrambled egg that is still fine to eat as the yolk is contained anyway due to the oil. 95% of the time all is cooked fine without incident and at low or 0 heat for most of the process (i mean on decay heat from prior cooking or on instant drop from hot to nothing as soon as they are in).

In any case pure experience will tell people right away what happens if you use a lot of heat to the egg, it burns, it becomes yellow in the edges and crusty locally. You dont want that. I prefer the decay heat method i described because the egg is not burned at all anywhere, its very smooth and still only slightly solid or more like a high viscosity fluid in the end (regarding the yolk) and it did have a hot start the very first few seconds that has as purpose to kill any potential bacteria (rare anyway if the egg looks ok - always check the shell you throw away).

My method is excellent and healthy and clean. My hands by the way are never dirty when cooking, i always wash them before cooking and i also always wash them after i handle eggs and get a slight bit of liquid on my fingers. This is why i had 0 salmonella events in my life.

The 90 deg was a reference as a safe break point/method. Flat surface is much worse for a newbie. I can do it with a knife, a fork, the edge of the pan and whatever can produce a big localized pressure in a small area so that it breaks very locally without creating pieces and without destroying any other part of the egg other than the strike region. The corner helps because it requires less skill and contains the break only where you want it and breaks also the mebrane right away because it punctures the egg surface rather than breaking it in many pieces and pushing it in with the membrane not cut. That way opening the egg is trivially easy next if you are gentle and accurate (as i described with fingers and thumbs) which after a couple tries you have already mastered. Experts can break an egg on one hand even real fast using any surface to hit it because they know how.

Bacon fat and butter frying etc gl with heart issues guys although i have had it this way too. If you have one egg this way every day or two like that with fat tell me what happens after a decade. Olive oil that is not burned and is only properly heated is the best way that leaves no problems for you. But you are forgiven because you do not have olive groves back at home like i do hehehe to be able to enjoy the perfect virgin oil at no cost and value its taste.


Ps1: None of you actually described to anyone reading how you break the egg to open it without incidents. But i did.
Ps2: Brian the minutes of cooking are a function of the heat flow you provide so forget the time unless you specify the conditions. You can fry an egg even on the hot sun in a black surface. Will it take 2-3 min there too?

Working class people do not drink tea for breakfast - it is anathema. It will cause at least some consternation and also, rightly so, some outright disgust. In addition, sideways comments will surface as to the person's manliness and sexual preference. My substantial evidence for the above is twenty-eight years of growing up within the confines of the working class social structure.

And tea with bacon and eggs and toast is just silly. Unless you are a Brit. And Limeys don't count in my book. See above.

At present, I'm having some gunpowder green tea, supplemented with homemade apricot jam on wheat toast. This is an after breakfast treat that is perfect while typing out this post and doing all my mod duties for 2+2 on this sunny Saturday. You may, of course, question my manliness as you see fit, in full knowledge that I'm impervious to such jabs and barbs but love hearing about them nonetheless.

Look what these guys do but i avoid the flipping (which is hard for the inexperienced anyway) because i use more oil (instead of an oil or butter film like most vids - more like the second one) and i can pick up the oil with a spoon and leave it on top of the yolk 10-20 times until its white real fast all within 30 seconds as i add a bit of salt and pepper to the yolk area. Basically my eggs are partially swimming in oil that is not very hot as they cook (unlike most videos). The end product is totally white, nothing is burned and invites you to dip some bread into the yolk too. It is still nearly liquid inside when done but not totally running when you break it either (in between solid and liquid).




(notice what he is doing with the spoon here)




Look also at this guy that uses butter and notice how he breaks the egg which is how i described it too. He does flip it though so we differ in the rest. He has to flip it of course because the yolk upside isnt cooking all that much (but it does if you do the oil thing i described with the spoon without need for flipping).

Twenty-eight years of growing up?

Maybe SMP needs a Who Is The Most Working Class? thread.

Flat surface is much easier for the first attempt of cracking an egg as the 10,000th attempt. By striking on an edged surface, you have a much smaller range of force to not force shell bits through the membrane and into the white. I am presuming that the difficult part for most SMP readers is the precision of the force, rather that they can't summon the necessary force to crack the egg.

My method would be less effective than yours for those who find eggs to be incredibly heavy. You will note in the video you showed that the eggs were cracked on a flat surface in the video with the olive oil and it looked much easier.

The reason to use butter or bacon, rather than olive oil is because it tastes more betterer. Using olive oil isn't criminal here, but it is less than ideal. For those with health issues, I would recommend not drinking the butter or bacon fat you used for frying your eggs with a straw.

As far as temperature goes, you can see from Zeno's picture that he was cooking at a slightly higher temperature than is ideal (the bubbles in the thinner part of the egg are a sign of this) for most people's tastes (some do like a crust on their eggs though). I do not recommend cooking eggs on black surfaces in the sun. Using a stove and a pan is much more practical. If you find yourself without stove and pan and only with a bit of pavement, the proper method is to go to a restaurant and order your eggs to be cooked.

I feel bad for the youngsters that try to follow this advice. What you describe sounds a lot closer to an oil-poached egg than a fried egg.

I'm not as picky about the corner vs flat surface debate, but the error tolerance for flat surface is much larger than corners. It's hard to smash an egg on the counter without really trying to do that, but you can make some real messes trying to crack an egg on the corner of your pan.

Here's some three Michelin starred advice:

http://youtu.be/dgBJZ6ejIJ0?t=4m9s

I challenge you to do this. Unless you live on a planet closer to the sun than ours, or unless your black surface is the top crust of lava flow, you're not going to be able to do this.

I'm glad you have a sense of sanitation. But you're seriously overplaying the value of anything you're doing as contributing significantly to your not getting salmonella.

It isn't just the chance of making a mess.

I can't even remember how long it has been since the last time I had to pick egg shell bits out of an egg.

A. I'm currently sixty-one and I'm still 'growing up'. Like cooking you never stop learning.

B. No contest, I'd win so easily it would be silly to start one.


By the way, the only time you cook eggs in butter (or olive oil) is with asparagus. There is an Italian recipe [Asparagi con le uova) for this, it is a simple dish, and tastes great:

Excellent link for how to with good pictures etc:

http://www.italyum.com/vegetable-rec...l#.VLrElu85DY8

First of all i never suggested to cook this way. All i said is that sometimes its possible. (maybe in the desert in the middle east)

If these guys had a little bit of oil to go it might get them even better results with the pan sitting there for 1-2 hours in the hot sun. If you had a solar focusing system even better of course;






Obviously its not as easy in a random hot day without maximizing all edges available.

The way i see it here is how i would do it. I would use what the first guy did but have 2 pans out there. Once the first is used up its temperature drops. But i can flip the egg to the other pan now and continue to get a slightly better result because the egg starts not from say 20-25C as the raw egg brought from indoors but from 40-50-60 already "cooking" on the first pan.

(not sure if the second guy waited 10 min or did some dirty trick indoors but all you need is to do what the first guy did and use more time and maybe 2 pans as suggested above and maybe even have the oil warm in a 3rd pan to throw in the end above the eggs while on the second pan spoon by spoon)

I never said that it would be the best quality in the world done that way. I used it as an example of how even at small heat in decay mode you can cook it but it takes 5-10 min then (as i described it often cooking it after i have finished frying potatoes).

Also dont feel sorry for any youngster that listens to me. They will get super nice quality eggs and in a healthy manner. As you can see from the videos i posted the egg is not poached or anything crazy like that when using a little bit more than a film of oil. The yolk is still above the surface of the oil as it is sitting there cooking in my examples. This is why you need to use the spoon to throw oil on top of it 15-20-30 times real fast for the first minute or so. That way it creates a nice white film on top of the yolk instead of being all yellow and no flipping (that may break the yolk) is needed plus the yolk gets heat even from the top not just the bottom of the pan.

The chance to get contamination because you didnt wash your hands after dealing with eggs or raw chicken is small of course to tiny and statistically unimportant maybe vs other risks of proper cooking or proper washing salads etc. But it is not zero.

Sometimes in SMP i get the feeling people post just to argue...

Flavor preferences are flavor preferences. See Zeno's post above where he seems to believe that asparagus is a food.

The physics and human factor engineering of egg cracking is indisputable.

Best revenge of the day (for all the mocking on my eggs) is that my meal finished in about 30 min was inspired by this thread;

French fries, 2 eggs, split peas (mushed) with oil and lemon, tuna fish, cheese, bread, salad, a glass of milk (you can have your alcohol, i can do without it for months with full apathy) and apple/kiwi for fruit.

Yeah i suppose Brian wont like the flavors lol. My food by the way tastes better than most girls' dishes that have ever cooked for me and only slightly worse than the rare best (the girls themselves of course always taste better than any food they ever made). Only mom tops everyone but hasnt cooked for me in years.

Both videos look a bit rigged to me. The cut in the first video is highly suspicious if you compare the looseness of the yolk before and after. The second video looks really rigged because of the browning of the egg white smears. Browning --> Maillard reaction --> Hotter than boiling water.

This why I think you should actually try to do it. It requires far more sophistication than simply claiming that you can fry an egg in the hot sun on a black surface. You can certainly "cook" an egg with a sufficient amount of fussing around with it (it's more complex than a dark pan in the hot sun), but the egg certainly will not be "fried."