More egg-citement!
With eggs now costing so much, a smart household will squeeze the maximum enjoyment out of each egg. In a recent article I described boiling, sunny-side up, and lazy-person scrambled. Now here are some fancier, but still easy, egg dishes.
Slow-Cooked Scrambled. Overcooking an egg, by whatever method, is guaranteed to destroy all its flavor. Most people have never tasted correctly cooked scrambled eggs. Try my method.
Crack 2-3 eggs into a bowl and beat about 30 seconds with a fork (not an egg-beater, which will make them too frothy) until the white and yolk are more or less blended. You can put a pinch of salt and pepper before beating.
Put 2 tablespoons oil into a 10-12 inch pan and preheat on low heat for 30 seconds. Carefully pour in the beaten eggs. If you had the correct heat, it will seem like nothing happened. Good. Wait a few seconds, then with a spatula push the slightly hardened (but still very soft) edges toward the center. Uncooked egg will spill out and start cooking in turn. Wait some more, then again push the partly-cooked edges toward the center. The egg will start to pile up in the center. Keep piling cooked parts (they will start to resemble ribbons) in the center.
Better than a spatula are inexpensive wood chopsticks still joined at the base. The twin points allow liquid egg to flow outward to the edges while moving cooked parts toward the center.
Do not do what some ignorant restaurant cooks do, which is to lift the pan and tilt it around to spread the egg. This will get you tasteless egg flakes.
If you do it right, at low heat, in 2-3 minutes you will have gently cooked and very tasty eggs, bordering on undercooked. As a check, if you can lift large segments whole with a dinner fork, you cooked too fast or too long. If you can cut the egg as if it were pudding with the side of the fork, it’s overcooked. The egg should not be fluffy, but dense and moist. A fork should only be able to pick up a small mouthful.
Sprinkle with paprika or chives if desired.
Huevos Rancheros. This is easy to do, but requires some other ingredients: beans or refried beans, most brands being about the same. A Mexican salsa of your choice; Tostitos works but is slightly sour, so you can add a tiny bit of sugar.
And, the key ingredient: correct chile con carne. You can’t make it at home, as the process is just too laborious. So you need a canned product. I have tasted many brands of chile con carne in the US and Europe, but the only one I can recommend in good conscience is my brand, Plantation Prime, which is now also available in Dubai and Australia. Our chile con carne uses real diced (not ground) US chuck (not local, not gristle, not a too-lean cut) beef, sautéed then simmered for hours with spices and whole beans to bring out the full flavor — smoky, mildly spicy, beefy.
Put all the above on a heated soft tortilla. (Or, for those in the Middle East, any similar soft flatbread, such as Indian paratha.)
Omelet. An omelet takes a little work and patience. You will need about 8 minutes at fairly low heat to do omelet right.
For meaty fillings, sauté the onions first (if your recipe doesn’t have onions, get a better recipe), then garlic much later (it gets bitter fast). Then the herbs, meat, and meat-like ingredients (such as ham, mushrooms, peas). Mix thoroughly with the aim of spreading the onion, garlic, and herb flavors to the meat. If there are any watery ingredients, such as tomato or red pepper, these come last, otherwise the other ingredients will wind up poached instead of sautéed. (Up to this point, about 4 minutes since start.)
When all the ingredients have been correctly sauteed, turn down the heat, wait until the heat is truly down, and pour in the eggs (previously beaten with a fork as described above).
Do a quick mixing to spread the meat flavors and aromas to the egg. Then leave it alone for a while.
Every 30 seconds or so, lift the pan with your right hand and “shock” the egg by hitting the handle with your left hand, fast, 2-3 times. Then back on the low fire. The vibrations will help the egg cook evenly and, most important, retard the development of a solid, sponge-like consistency throughout (which would make it tasteless).
About the 3rd minute, the top of the omelet should still be relatively uncooked. Now use a spatula to fold over the omelet. You can make a half-moon shape or (by folding opposite sides) a sort-of-tube shape. Cook for another 30 seconds or so, then slide it onto your plate.
For a cheese omelet, pick American or other cheese that melts easily. Better to crumble or tear into little pieces. Put the cheese into the pan right after the eggs, then follow the same “shock” procedure as described below for meaty omelets.
A correct omelet will have a very thin crust and a fully moist interior. Very little of it will look like a block of sponge. (For example, the egg you see on some Japanese sushi is seriously overcooked; it is pretty, but tasteless.) If the egg solidified around the ingredients, you used too high a heat level, or cooked too long.
Spanish-Method Deep-Fried Eggs. Hard to do, but worth the effort. (This is the way they used to do it in the probinsiya.) Preheat at least 1/2 inch of oil for about a minute, then put the eggs in. If you judged the oil temperature correctly, the egg will immediately sizzle and might develop big bubbles, but not uncontrollably. With your spatula, continuously flick oil on top of the egg; this is best achieved by pressing the spatula against the pan bottom and “making pitik” the oil over the white, trying to avoid the yolk. Just pushing or shoveling oil will not work and might lead to uncontrolled splashing.
Keep flicking oil for about 15-20 seconds, and you’re done! If you did it right, the white will be fully cooked and have a delightful crinkly texture, while the yolk will be just slightly viscous. (If the white is uncooked inside, next time raise the oil temperature or keep flicking oil longer.)
After a few tries with any of my egg methods, you will get it right! And your eggs will seem a bargain even at P10 or more, considering how delicious they are. Consider it your way of fighting inflation from the other end, by raising value.
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Manny Gonzalez is an amateur cook, and developed most of the egg-cooking techniques and egg-based dishes at Plantation Bay Resort & Spa. Having lived in Paris, London, New York, Barcelona, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Hong Kong, while also traveling extensively in Latin America, he is familiar with fine as well as basic cuisine in many cultures.
