Back to Basics

poaching eggs and snowplowing

I take a few eggs out of the refrigerator, place them on the counter to reach room temperature, then I step outside. The sun is out today, bright and crisp. Tiny flurries spin in the air, catching the light like diamonds. There is a crescent moon above me, a curve of white against the blue. The snow squeaks under my boots, the way it does when it’s very cold outside. It’s a two layers of long underwear under the ski gear kind of day.

It’s also a poached egg kind of day. I fill a small saucepan with cold water and place it on the stove. The eggs in the fruit bowl have lost their chill; I crack them into little bowls, one for each egg, and wait for the water to boil. Beams of light stream through the window casting strong shadows across the counter. When the water reaches a gentle boil I add a splash of vinegar, about a teaspoon. This will help to coagulate the egg whites so they can hold their shape as they roll around in the boiling water. I swirl the water with a wooden spoon, plop in the eggs, then ask Siri to set a timer for three minutes. I want the yolks to be runny, not watery. Five minutes makes for a jammier egg. Eight for hard.

The eggs somersault in the water, the whites wrapping around the yolks like a shawl twisting in the wind. I was taught to poach eggs this way at cooking school where the curriculum was classical French technique. We stood at the stove in our whites, encouraging boiling water to flow in a clockwise swirl with a wooden spoon. When the maelstrom occurred, we slipped the eggs into the the vortex and hoped they would magically stay intact as they we taken by the current. A perfectly poached egg should resemble an egg in its shell, a quenelle.¹

I believe in revisiting the basics, again and again. They are the foundation of everything we do. This explains why I am here in Quebec at a ski camp for adults, snowplowing through powder on day one with our poles balancing horizontally on outstretched arms. This helps us to remember to stack our bodies athletically over our skis. Only when our shins consistently kiss the front of our boots and our skis don’t shoot out from under us are we ready to hold our poles properly and ‘let it rip’ down the hill. It wasn’t always pretty. On day two the snow wrapped around me like a shawl twisting in the wind. But then on day three things aligned, the skills layered on top of each other and I floated down the hill through sugarcoated evergreens. Guimauve! shouts our instructor. There are marshmallows, everywhere.

I lift the steaming eggs from the water with a slotted spoon and lay them on a clean tea towel to drain. They aren’t perfectly shaped quenelles, they are floppy and lacy and circular. It’s ok. Slices of sourdough are in the toaster. I have an avocado ready to be eaten that I will spoon over the toast with a good sprinkling of sea salt and black pepper. Hollandaise would have been nice. Or chilli crisp. Maybe tomorrow. The eggs are the foundation to be built upon, ready to be made my own.

1. ‘Quenelle’ is a technique for shaping smooth foods into a smooth, egg shape using two spoons. Here’s a hearty wintery soup from the archives served with a quenelle of crème fraîche.