Let the Great Experiment Begin!1

I watched curling² on TV today for the first time. Curling is that silly sport with the brooms that is the official snack-break of winter olympics watchers. I can't say that it holds a candle to ski-jumping or this (thanks, Will), but it is unequivocally more interesting than the biathlon, and here's why: (1) It's a strategy game--"rocks in the house," "he's got the hammer," "hard line," "let it curl"--all of the best strategy games have great, impenetrable idioms ("Sicilian defense, dragon variation" comes to mind). (2) You actually get to see what's happening, unlike the biathlon. I'm waiting with bated breath for the bullet-cam. You know, biathlon matrix-style. It's the only chance they've got. Watching a nice curl is kind of like watching a great ping pong or tennis game in slowmo where you get to appreciate all the spin put on every shot. (3) Finally, curling is a mixture of extreme concentration and at times--here's what I love about it--absolute panic. Sometimes they let the rock slide and the ice is completely silent, and sometimes the skip (please excuse my novice errors in curling terminology) is screaming at the absolute top of his fucking lungs at the sweepers to stop being such lazy assholes and sweep the goddamn ice. This panic on the part of the skip paired with the zeal and enthusiasm with which the sweepers comply with his panicked hollering is inherently hilarious. If the skip has botched his throw the most the can do is yell at the sweepers to clean up his mess. As if the skip's inability to do anything once he releases weren't tense enough, there's something that is fundamentally anxiety inducing in being forced to watch someone else do what you think you can do better. That's the kind of relationship I imagine between the skip and the sweepers.³

One reason that curling has showed up here is that after watching it, I had to get it out of my system. I just couldn't not talk about it. The other reason is that it has a vague, tenuous relation to poaching eggs, the actual subject of this post. I liked curling for the same reason that I liked a little egg-poaching experiment that I did a few weeks ago. A subtlety of motion and careful technique is essential to curling, and to well-poached eggs. However, there's also that oh-my-god-what-have-i-done, everything-is-going-to-hell, my-beautiful-egg-is-losing-it's-shape moment of panic that makes things so exciting as you try to coddle your poorly-curled egg into some sort of togetherness. This is part of the reason that people think that egg poaching and curling are difficult. Well, egg-poaching isn't really that hard, or so I discovered.

First of all, I know that doubling up on the eggs is poor form; however, you need to stop whining and poach yourself some. It'll be worth it. The light satiny texture of poached whites with the umami goodness of warm, runny yolk is glory incibuate.⁴

As it turns out, there's a lot of cooking that has to do with science and a lot of cooking that has to do with "science." I happened to be in the presence of a scientist (or "scientist"?) last weekend who mildly tolerates my food experimentation. Nicole was visiting me in Seattle and when it came time to make some brunch, she and I decided to have a friendly little competition between to egg-poaching virgins. Actually, saying that we "decided" is a bit disingenuous. Nicole strong-armed me with her spirit of antagonism into having a competition. Here are the results. You be the judge:

Nicole's Egg:




Peter's Egg:





In the interest of full disclosure (and not sore-loserness) I took the picture of Nicole's egg and she took the picture of mine. And you can't really judge from pictures anyway, so whatever. It's not like anyone's judging. But, if you are, notice that beautiful runny yolk oozing out of my egg's glorious dome, and think Hagia Sophia. Here are the thoughts that we gathered on technique:

{+} Poach an Egg

Poached Egg
For one


1 egg
1 tbs vinegar

This is less a recipe than an explanation of technique. So here's the step by step that we came up with:

1. Boil water in a small pot. We used my 2.5-quart pot filled with 2 inches or so of water.

2. While the water is boiling, get your egg ready. One of the tricks to keeping the egg together is to place it as gently as possible into the water. To do this, Nicole and I cracked our eggs into a small mug.

3. Once the water boils, turn off the heat. You want to get the water hot enough, but it needs to be still when you put the egg in. Add the vinegar now. From what we read on the internet, vinegar helps to keep the whites around the yolk because of some "chemical reaction." We used unseasoned (meaning, unsweetened) rice vinegar. Any clear, mild vinegar should be fine.

4. When there are no longer any more bubbles in the water (not even small ones) ease your egg with the gentleness of an expert curler into the warm water.


5. When you ease the egg into the water, you should be ready with a large spoon. Use the spoon to coddle the egg and stop the white from dispersing itself in the water. In our experience, some strands of white are unavoidable, but unproblematic.


6. Once the egg has stopped spreading (20 seconds, maybe) cover the pot and let sit off the heat for 4 minutes. You want the white to be cooked, but the yolk to be runny.

7. Top with S and P.

Finally, we read some bologna about making a whirlpool in the pot to poach your egg. This seems unnecessary. It essentially serves the same function as coddling with the spoon. I imagine that the whirlpool helps to keep the white together by pressing it up against the edge of the pot. It's probably cool if you can get this to work, but by no means an essential technique.

We ate our silky little nubbins atop a bed of garlicky sauteed kale and wheat toast. Like eggs florentine, but with kale. And minus the hollandaise due to my unflagging laziness. Here's the scoop⁵ on that:

{+} Eggs Kalentine It

Eggs Kalentine
For one


1 Poached egg (see above)
1 Cup chopped Kale
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp Olive Oil
1 Piece of bread (or English Muffin)

Not much to this, really:
1. Sautee the Kale with the EVOO and the garlic (minced or crushed).


2. Toast the bread.
3. Egg on kale on bread.

This whole section was probably overkill. Whoops.

However, the kitchsperiments don't end with poaching eggs. You may remember that in my tzatziki post I mentioned that straining regular yogurt could yield something that approximates the consistency of greek yogurt. At the time, I didn't know that. Now I do. After doing some egg cleanup, we moved on to kitchsperiment 2: thickening yogurt. We infused some ginger and ate it as a sweet, tangy treat with honey. It was creamy and spicy and wonderful. Here's the lowdown:

{+} Strained Ginger Yogurt

Straining Yogurt
Yields half of whatever you start with

Plain Yogurt (as much as you want)
Chopped Ginger
Butter

The essential technique is this: put yogurt in layered cheese cloth (you should be able to get cheese cloth pretty easily at the gstore--they had it at the Safeway in Seattle). Hang it in the sink for a few hours until the volume is about half of what you started with. That's all there is to it.

We chopped some ginger and heated it briefly with the butter in order to tone down it's kick a touch. Then we mixed it with the yogurt before hanging it in the sink.

Before:

After:


I highly recommend doing this if you can't find/don't have greek yogurt. It may or may not (because of the volume loss) be more cost-effective than buying the Greek Yogurt straight.

Also, it's handy to have cheesecloth on hand. Just in case you want to make Ricotta...

Well, friends, that's all I've got for now.

Keep on brunching,
Peter

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¹ Fünke. [Note: Clicking the footnote number here in the footnote now brings you back to where the footnote is in the text. How cool is that?]

² The only reason that it caught my attention is that a dear friend of mine, let's call him Bideon (something so embarrassing must be treated with the requisite anonymity in this public forum), has joined a curling league. It's a fascinating study in despair to ponder how far in to the abyss you must have descended to think sweeping ice is fun.

³ This is almost certainly my projection rather than any sort of fact of the matter about the personal dynamics of professional curling.

⁴ Gid, you may have to correct my bastardization of Latin here. I'm not even close to making a real word. It's just that incarnate was not quite right and grated on my vegetarian sensibilities.

⁵ I am currently reading Scoop by Evelyn Waugh for a little book-gathering that I am part of. It's a dry and humorous satire of British journalism and politics in the first half of the 20^th century. Also, it is unrelated to the Woody Allen movie. It is related to the new Brideshead Revisted movie in that Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead. Y'all can thank Kribs for the recommendation.