The Holy Grail of the Kitchen Part II

It's always eggs isn't it. Why do I have such a problem with eggs? This time, it was the simple task of boiling an egg to dip my soliders in that caused the trauma.

Sarah had kindly treated me to a set of 4 novelty egg cups when she was over with Caoimhe. The day before yesterday I decided to road test one of them by boiling an egg and making some toast soldiers for good measure. I'm not sure that I've ever boiled an egg before , but it can't be that difficult. From what I can remember it goes something like this:

Place a pan of water on the hob.
Switch the hob on.
Wait til the first bubble comes to the surface.
Add egg
Remove egg after three minutes.
Eat soft boiled egg.

Step 1. No problem.
Step 2. No problem (well actually I turned the wrong ring on first, but it didn't take me long to realise when I could smell burning plastic coming from my melting spatular)
Step 3. I was a bit unsure here, didn't know what constituted a proper 'bubble'. Almost as soon as I'd turned the heat on there were bubbles, but I waited longer than that. After about 4 minutes there were proper 'big' bubbles, so I took this to mean the water was ready.
Step 4. Hmm. My egg seemed to be the wrong shape for my tongs, but after some careful co-ordination I managed to pick it up and lower it into the pan.
Step 5. I went back to watching Frasier on TV and used the clock in the corner of the screen to time my egg. After 3 full minutes I returned to the kitchen, removed the pan from the heat and lifted the egg from the pan using a spoon.
Step 6. Not a chance. I managed to get the egg into the cup, but found that my little egg was far too small for it's holder. Only a few millimetres of shell was showing over the rim of the cup! Never mind, I took a knife and gently tapped at the side. The shell cracked neatly all the way round and I lifted the 'lid' off....

...the egg was almost raw. There was a thin coating of 'white' around the edges, but the central yolk was liquid, and the remainder of the egg white was still clear. What a waste of an egg.....

.... but no. I whipped out my frying pan, added a little oil, used the hob that was still hot from the boiling water and poured the uncooked boiled egg in. Fried egg instead of boiled. I assume my problem was my interpretation of what was boling water, and what was mearly hot water. Never mind...

...at least the egg didn't go to waste.

p.s. I have boiled eggs actually. When I worked in the sandwich shop in Douglas. Problem there though was it was 60 eggs at a time, and we left them on til their shells cracked naturally because we needed them to be hard boiled. Not quite the same.