01. 02. 2006
Cooking the perfect egg
The traditional breakfast in Singapore and Malaysia is toast slathered with kaya (a jam made from coconut milk and eggs, and scented with pandan leaves) and butter, a couple of soft-boiled eggs lightly drizzled with soya sauce, and hot coffee (condensed milk optional). It was only when I tried to prepare this myself that I realised just how tricky making the perfect soft-boiled egg was. Delia Smith notwithstanding, I find making soft-boiled and hard-boiled eggs an inexact science. Fortunately for those of us who aren’t domestic goddesses, there are gadgets to help.
As a child, my grandmother relied on the “half-boiled egg maker” for our breakfast. This is a simple gadget consisting of 3 sections. You put the eggs into the upper compartment, pour boiling water over the eggs up to one of the fill lines (depending on how many eggs you’re cooking), put the lid on, then wait for the water to finish dripping into the lower compartment. I was surprised recently to find how commonly used this still is, though finding one for home use proved a little tricky. I was able to find one made by Thai manufacturer OTTO Ware, only to be reminded that Singapore, unlike Australia, is not safe from the avian flu.
With egg cooking still on my mind, I was unable to resist buying a microwave egg steamer made by Japanese manufacturer Pearl Life. Cooking eggs in the microwave isn’t of course a new concept, but this is the first gadget I’ve seen that will cook them in their shells, no piercing necessary. You pour water up the fill line of the lower half of the plastic “egg”, replace the perforated aluminium insert, set the eggs in the indentations of the insert, snap on the lid, and it’s ready to go in the microwave. Everything’s in Japanese, but the guide on the box is easy enough to follow, with different cooking times for different number of eggs and different consistencies (soft-boiled, hard-boiled with a soft centre, or completely hard-boiled). Following this, I have been able to make perfect hard-boiled eggs every time. The Pearl Life egg steamer will cook 3 eggs at a go, but the NordicWare version, available online, will cook 4.