Dippy Delights

Memories and Eggs.

I had a couple of sneaky days off this week, so enjoyed one of life’s greatest pleasures. Rather than my standard work-day breakfasts of (a) a cup of tea and nothing or (b) a hastily scoffed cereal bar in the car whilst stopped at a junction, I allowed the world to stop spinning around and within me for half an hour, and instead enjoyed a leisurely actual breakfast. Sitting at the table and everything.

Seeking comfort and restoration, I went dippy egg. Soft boiled for four minutes. Plenty of sea salt flakes and ground black pepper. Served in a Le Crueset egg cup and with bits of leftover asparagus from the previous night’s salad, because I am a middle class w*nker. I’d normally have it with toasted home-baked sourdough, because I am also pretentious as f*ck. My husband bakes not me, for I am additionally both incompetent and lazy.

Also delicious with bog-standard toast. Speaking of toast, absolutely fabulous writing on toast and on food and life more generally, I highly recommend Well Good Blog - smart, funny, interesting writing. Here he is on Why toast matters

Anyway, onwards. There is something simple and completely soulful about a dippy egg. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I think there is some physical stuff to begin with. It starts with the pleasing sound of the crack of the egg as you spank it with the back of the spoon. Then moves into the anticipation of slicing the egg-top off to see if your soft-boil has worked well or if you’re ruined your day already by over-cooking your yolk into a solid mass of orange magma. Assuming you haven’t, there is then the slightly erotic moment of the the first dunking that sees the yolk surge and ooze over the top of the egg, run down the sides and pool on your plate ready to be scraped off with toast or fingers. Then the excavation of the white, including the slight danger that you might consume tiny shards of shell. The satisfaction of the completely cleaned-out shell.

Beneath the sheer and beautiful physical sensations runs the emotional undercurrent. Right back to the days when a parent or grandparent lovingly cooked you the egg, sliced your toast into soldiers, popped it on a plate for you to eat while you sat on the sofa watching Going Live. When having cleaned out the shell, you’d turn it upside down in the egg cup and prank them to slice it open again. The smell of your childhood home, the feel of the sofas. The endless shades of brown and the backcombed hair. All this, from eating an egg. Blissful.

A note about the eggs. They are always eggs from our local farm shop, for which I will never apologise. Proper eggs from a local free range chicken in a field are stunning, the same price as the supermarket, have zero food miles, keep for much longer (because they’re fresh), and because I’d rather give what’s left of my hard-earned cash after HMRC have pillaged it, to a small local business when I can. The chickens (well, their owners) also periodically run a bloody brilliant pop up pub on the farm, which is well worth a visit if you’re in or around Butleigh.

Support, shop, visit, follow if you can… Sourdown Farm, Butleigh, Somerset

This week I also cooked stunning new Moroccan recipes, and went for lunch at Queen of Cups, Glastonbury - of which more next week. Meantime, eat up and have a great weekend. Big ❤️