11 January 2007

The RiotACT guide to singleton survival - Episode 4: The Egg

| johnboy
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In our ongoing efforts to ensure young Canberrans leaving home this year stay as healthy as possible with the maximum possible beer budget allow me to present a vital ingredient: The egg…

It keeps for weeks without refrigeration. You can scramble it, you can fry it, you can boil it, you can cook it in with fried rice. It is used the world over as a source of cheap protein as evidenced by the wikipedia’s list of egg dishes.

I’m sure the comment gallery have plenty of suggestions for what can be done with eggs.

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I think there should be a post in this series on finding accomodation/moving out of home – having recently been through the process of interviewing for flatmates it strikes me that there are a number of people who don’t know how to do this – e.g. when looking at a place, engage with the person. Spending two minutes looking at the place, barely talking about yourself or asking questions, then ringing up later asking if you got the place – not a winning strategy…

After all, an egg is a chicken’s period

Man who’d want to be a chicken? Every day??

Vic Bitterman11:47 pm 12 Jan 07

Danman your first (big) post is a ripper. I must show it my wife, who hates cooking eggs or cooking anything ‘eggy’. 🙂

AD does have a point. After all, an egg is a chicken’s period. But johnboy is also right, it’s cheap protein.

Dunno where you source your eggs AD – but i hope they do not sell apples

two words

cheap

protein

Absent Diane10:05 pm 11 Jan 07

the egg is not a food. why would anyone eat something that smells as though it has come out of someones arse.

In hot weather (like this, similar to the Sahara), you can really save money by not cooking indoors. Park car in sun, take one dozen eggs, break them over the bonnet or roof with a little oil and invite your friends round to help scrape off and eat.
Additional benefit: your car will then look just right to enter into the next Summernats.

Also if you want (insert western accent here) “purdy” eggs – hard boil and the n crack shell and roll in hand to crack it finely but do no t peel – soak in a cup of black tea for about 10 minutes then peel – what you have left is an egg that looks quite like its made of marble

Hi, they’re all in the youth issues category, I prefer not to have categories for limited series (plan to wrap this one up by February).

Can someone please post the links to the last three instalments of the Singleton Survival thing? Advice by all sides of the RiotACT community is extremely helpful.

Preferably, could a moderator add a “Singleton Survival” link to the Main Menu on the right? It’s a series, and it would be easier to keep track of this way.

Thanks

the next entry will be how to remove hand dryers off walls off licensed premises toilets with minimal damage to said infrastructure…

I think Ari and S4anta are working on the Riotact Guide to suburban terrorism…

Weird how they are all brown these days . . . when I was a kid you would get a random mix of white and brown in the dozen.

*shakes head*

S4anta, hubcaps are an excellent place to put that mixture.

It’s the last place most people look.

not too mention, when mixed with mince, they become quite a handy spack filler to be placed with gay abandon in houses and other lacales where the desire is to create a smell fine enough to even wish that the barny army could have a shower after entering said locale. May i suggest air conditioning points?

When lobbing eggs, off or not. I tend to find that when semi-frozen the air bubble stays inside them enabling them to thrown with more vigour (anger), not too mention they then become ammunition for a variant of the orange gun, or sling shot.

Guessing you should wash out the shell a bit before putting the choccy in too?

Kerces that sounds a lot like hard work!

While I agree with all suggestions above, I maintain that, without doubt, the single most useful employment of the egg is fried with bacon, mushies, tomato and spinach the morning after (see: “The RA Guide to Singleton Survival Episode 2: Beer”).

Carefully put a pinhole in one end and a slightly larger hole in the other. Blow firmly but gently through the pinhole until all the insides have come out. Use insides for whichever of the above suggestions takes your fancy (cake, omlette or scrambled eggs is best cos they come out all mixed up). Put some chocolate bits in a small glass container and put them in a microwave for about a minute at first then in 20 or 30 second bursts until melted. Stir thoroughly in between each microwave burst. While doing this, make the slightly larger hole in your eggshell a bit bigger still. Spoon, pour or cajole the melted chocolate into the eggshell and clean up any bits on the outside. Put in fridge until hard and you’ve got a very solid, very cute easter present.

That second sentence of mine is appalling.
Good thing I’ll be getting back to study soon!

True. However if you realy enjoy cooking the bottle can be used again, hopefully resulting in more lays.

Rubbing an egg with a layer of butter/marg before boiling can also help to prevent cracking.

$16 to a pimply singleton is, like, 5 or 6 beers.

I thought Marsala was only like $16? And, yeah, for cooking you can buy one of those nip sized bottles.

Damnit man! We’re talking about whoopee here! Surely even a broke singleton can scrape together a few bucks for a mini of liquer (Marsala is traditional – but other liquers are equally good).

Zabaglione is tops. But you need Marsala wine to make it properly. A bit beyond the budget of the pimply and pecunious singleton?

Rather than putting yer egg in water, try holding it up next to your ear and give it a shake. If you hear a sloshing sound, save it for Mr. Barr et al. It may not yet be off, but it means that the white is peeling away from the shell. Regardless, it’s not fresh, and will taste arse.

If you have a backyard – buy chooks. They lay eggs that put supermarket freerange to shame for flavour and colour and are endlessly amusing.

While we’re on eggs – learn to separate the yolk from the white and make zabaglione (or sabayon, if you’re French) and the person you’re trying to get in the sack will have to be fended off with a star picket.

Why only Mr Barr? Save a few for the other tyrants too. (i.e. don’t put all your eggs in one basket).

Not sure if an egg is off or not? Easy way to check (rather than opening it up) is to pop it into a glass of water: if it sinks it’s fine and can be cooked, if it floats, it’s off and can be thrown at Mr Barr’s house.

crack a few eggs into a bowl
add a splash of milk and some herbs
whisk it up with a fork
chuck in a frypan and fry it up.. keepin it moving
walah! scrambled eggs.

there’s also omelettes
fried eggs

Since this column is possibly aimed (in part) at students, don’t waste any eggs that might have been forgotten in your fridge, cupboard or under the bed for over 3 months. They can be used to make an emphatic statement at those demos which seem to occur once or twice a year.

it goes in quiche
speaking of which, I can’t find how to get back to my article that i saved that was awaiting pictures, can anyone tell me ? I’ve got the images now…

VYBerlinaV8_now with_added_grunt10:34 am 11 Jan 07

Get the older vegetables ffrom the bottome of your fridge, cut them very small, put them in the wok/frypan with a little oil or cooking spray. Add a small amout of soy sauce and turn until cooked. Add several lightly beaten eggs to the pan, and when cooked you have a highly nutritious and filling meal. It also cleans up vegetables that may nbot otherwise get used.

An added bonus is that it tastes a little different each time. For the adventurous, use chilli, thai seasoning, italian herbs, …etc

Throw them at Andrew Barr’s house!

Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.

Free range eggs taste better. Especially the fresh ones at the markets.

Toast, tomato sauce, butter, cheese (not the shrinkwrapped plastic slice rubbish mind) fried egg with a runny middle. Salt and pepper.

Bliss!

Add bacon

Golconda!

Esp. because you’re not supposed to put foil in the microwave!

My suggestion would be that they SHOULD be kept under refrigeration as all poultry products have samonella in them.

If kept between ~8 degrees and 60 degrees – this salmonella will grow to a dangerous level.

I have been poisened by salmonella before and its nopt much fun – I pity someone young, old or infirm getting poisoned.

Best storage would be 3 degrees – i.e. in your refrigerator.

Yes I know they keep them on the shelf at the supermarket – but the turnover is such there that they do not remain in situ for as long as they would in your warm cupboard.

When I was a chef I used to get eggs out of the fridge the night before breakfast service (its amoazing how slow cooking an egg can get when you cook 50 or so very cold eggsin a row in a fry pan)

Overnight would be the longest that I would risk keeping them out of refrigeration.

Also battery eggs are ALWAYS fresher than free range – the problem being that free range eggs are not always collected on the day that they are laid – battery eggs are – the reason for this is because free range eggs tend to be well hidden and it may be a few days between egg laying and farmer collecting.

When using bulk eggs for a recipe – crack one at a time into a seperate container then place that one egg in your other ingredients and repeat – the reason being that often in the industry I found a rotten egg every 50 or so – and if it goes straight into the other ingredients then your shafted..

Also to keep your whites together when poaching (so it does not go like porridge) 2 tbsp white vinegar will do the trick.

Never put a cold egg in boiling water – it will crack and spew forth its contents.

Cold egg in cold water on teh stove fiull blast – 10 minutes from turning on the water full blast you will have a SOFT yolk egg – 3 monre minutes and its hard.

If you ever see a boiled egg and it has a green ring around the yolk – it has been overboiled – this is the albumen (yolk sac).

It was for me as a chef a real art to boil 30 or so eggs at once and have this never happen.

Oh my fave – scotch egg – boil an egg – then peel it and cover it in sausage mince then bread crumbs then fry it. Yummo.

Peeling eggs is best while they are still hot – but do it under running water (or in a sink of weater these days)

You will occasionally get a real bitch of an egg to peel – peeling back like 4 layers of white while trying to peel the egg. In my experience this just happens – Do not know why – but there is not much you can do.

Ill shut up now.

However, by all that you hold dear, DO NOT attempt to boil eggs in the microwave.

Advanced culineers report it is possible to microboil and egg by covering the egg in foil and then boiling the water in the microwave. I fail to see the point of this approach.

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