Cooking Eggs – A basic skill
Eggs are such a versatile food. Nutritious, easy to cook and inexpensive to acquire. For an even cheaper option, and more environmentally friendly, why not build your own chicken coop and keep a few hens. They are also very necessary in a number of recipes, particularly in cake baking and in some pastries.
Eggs are usually used for breakfast – who can forget boiled eggs as a child. Eggs really are healthy cooking for kids. A more sophisticated (and modern) dish is scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. This is a dish guaranteed to impress, yet is really simple to prepare. It takes minutes to prepare and cook and little or no cooking knowledge to get it right – serve with toast and champagne if you are really pushing the boat out. Otherwise, orange juice and/or coffee is fine.
For lunch or brunch, soufflés and omelettes are great. These require a little more skill, but the results are worth the trouble and many changes can be made with the use of various fillings – cheese of various types give different tastes and almost all cold meats can be used Shellfish, vegetables and ham are a few options you could try.
Try a Spanish omelette for a tasty quick meal. It doesn’t have to be light and fluffy and is much easier to make. It’s very simple to make. Break some eggs into a bowl and whisk until they are well mixed. Now take a frying pan and any left over vegetables, cut into small pieces. Gently fry the vegetables for a few minutes in a healthy cooking oil (not much oil, you only want to stop it sticking), then gently stir in the eggs. Now let it cook until the eggs are cooked all through. Cut into as many pieces as you want and serve. Delicious.
Try using boiled eggs as finger bites at parties. Boil your eggs until they are hard boiled. Take the shells off of them and cut them lengthwise in halfs. Scoop out the yolks and put them in a bowl. Carefully set the whites aside – you will want them whole later. Now add flavours to the yolks. There are a number of ingredients you can use depending on your taste and your pocket. You could try mayonnaise (or salad cream). Cream cheese. Small pieces of ham. A little garlic butter. But only use one flavour in each egg. Mix your egg yolk with the selected flavour, then pile it back into the egg white halfs. Serve on a bed of lettuce with a garnish of parsley. These can be used as an entree for a main meal, simply serve them with salad.