The Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg

One of my ongoing breakfast quest is the perfect soft-boiled egg. I prefer my whites to be just cooked and my yolk to be running. This calls for precision timing. I generally use my eggo, but alas the need to measure water precisely means that I often end up with overcooked eggs when I get it wrong.

I'm currently on one based on Heston's soft-boiled eggs. But I've changed it so much it's probably not really that anymore. What I did in the following is cover eggs with water, put over my medium stove, low heat, turn off when the water boils, leave for a minute and then spoon out.

Using Heston's faithfully, I get the following from my stove.

The hardest part is patiently waiting for the water to boil and then turning it off straight away. I am not known for my patience, but I occupied my time with some push-ups, etc. As you can see, it's NOT soft-boiled. I may have let it sit a bit longer than the 6 minutes, but I think that's not the main problem. Maybe my stove didn't boil the water quickly enough?

I've had a few instances of undercooking the yolk, but I seem to be swinging too far the other way.

As you can see, it's an ongoing experiment. So far, the winning methods appears to be slowly bringing to boil and turn off and take out immediately.

Tuesday's Breakfast - Porridge with Banana

I realise that I didn't pick a good week to do this. Along with Thursday and Friday being annual leave that I'd planned a month ago, I also called in sick yesterday. So this week is a grand total of... 2 work days. But nevertheless, I shall share what I create anyway.

Ever since I had the Porridge with Caramelised Banana at Auction Rooms in North Melbourne, I'd been hankering for porridge in the morning. So this morning, I decided to start experimenting with caramelising banana at work. Alas I forgot to find something sort of cream or bring walnuts. But I did have porridge and banana.

Now, I know quick oats are not as healthy as the regular oats. Whatever they do to process it, I think it increases the GI of the oats and possibly also lessen the fibre contents. But we're working with an office kitchen with no stove, so one has to make do with what one has.

First thing I did was cut the banana in half, and then sliced length wise. I placed it onto a plate, sprinkled with a sachet of sugar (but just one!) and decided to try the microwave over the sandwich press first. My rationale was that if it works in the microwave, it'd mean a lot less clean up. The microwave in the kitchen area is a bit dodgy and doesn't spin properly sometimes (next time I think I'll use the microwave in the office instead). So after about 30 seconds, I ended up with one mushy cooked banana and one... not so much. I flipped the one that wasn't over cooked, re-position the plate to make sure it spins this time and heated for another 10 seconds.

The result was... well, the banana tasted like cooked banana, but looked like play-doh. I'd also didn't put enough water into the porridge (no milk for me, trying to cut lactose in an effort to work out what is causing my allergies) and had pause the cooking to add more in. Improvements can definitely be made. Tomorrow is another day.

Simple Meals at Work Showcase Week

I've been struggling lately with healthy breakfast, lunches and snacks. Only lately have I managed to string together some light, healthy meals for myself at work. So to motivate myself to stay on track this week, I'm going to showcase some of the meals I come up with, using simple ingredients that's easy to buy and store at work.

So watch this space!