The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Literary Boiled Eggs: A Winner is Announced

 

 

 

A big thank you to all those kind people who took the time (and bother) to enter The Greasy Spoon "Literary Boiled Eggs" competition. To remind you: I asked readers to describe the art of boiling an egg, but in the style of their favourite writer. The prize is a copy of Grub Street's "A Taste of Portugual". 

The standard of entries was high. There were some cracking efforts. Honourable mentions must go to Will "Worm" Sterling for his "hard-boiled" pastiche of the crime writer, Jame Ellroy; Nick Good for his flamboyant interpretation of a Dorian Gray style kitchen bust-up, and Jody Porter for his elegant take on the poetry of William Carlos Williams. 

But we have a clear winner. Please step forward one Katrina Dixon. Of all the entries, hers was the one which most clearly identified with the spirit of Greasy Spoonery. I also happen to be a fan of Edgar Allan Poe's creepy short story, The Black Cat- so I'm biased.

 

Edgar Allan Poe's How To Boil An Egg

 

I cannot conceive of how I first thought of it, but in the hours between midnight and dawn a perverse notion came to haunt me. True, the disease had seized hold of my senses like a demon - but oh, what a demon! A fiend of gourmet tastes! Hark, let me tell you!

You may fancy me mad, but madmen know nothing of breakfast. As the first pale light of dawn dissolved the nightmares of the night - oh, what a night! - I slipped into the kitchen - as dank and fearful a place as ever I have beheld. A gloom descended over me, agitated by a faint shivering. I had not worn my slippers. I ventured towards the cooker, eggbox in one hand, took one egg - one brown, speckled egg - and placed it quickly in the saucepan of cold water. I could not look. Why, I cannot say. A great fear overtook me, as if in this saucepan, this metal beast, my own wretched heart lay, rather than a simple egg.

I regained my composure - I was not mad! Yet at the moment of lighting the gas burner my weak frame shuddered. Such a flame as might have come from hell! My hands shook, and my fingers went tapping of their own accord, tap-tap-tapping on the counter - no! no more tapping! - as I waited for the water to boil. I dared not breathe. And then - a shriek such as only the damned might offer overtook me - the water had boiled!

Two minutes and the egg would be boiled. Boiled such that I could depart this loathsome place and be done with this distasteful task. But that noise - barely audible at first - was increasing with every second. Louder it arose and yet louder. How could anyone bear it? This ungodly spluttering of boiling water. This sinister bubbling. When would it stop! A great rage suddenly filled me and I fell to my knees, praying for anything to drown this noise. Anything would be better than this fateful agony! Louder - louder still - the infernal noise would not abate! No, I must scream - I must surely die!

I do not know what I might have done had the egg-timer not announced its shrill desist at that very point of my unravelling, yet it did. The terror was over. The deed was done. The egg was boiled!

 

Literary Boiled Eggs: A Greasy Spoon Competition

 

 

 

Thinking about it, I don't think I've ever held a competition on The Greasy Spoon before, which is stupid of me, I know. And about time too, I hear you mutter. So in the noble interest of experimentation I've come up with a slightly wacky idea. I have no idea if it's going to work or not: I'm either going to be besieged with brilliant submissions, or I'll be facing the embarrassing ordeal of having to admit that I've not a single reply.

Here's the competition: I want you to write a recipe. It's a simple one- It's "How to Boil an Egg". But there's a twist. I want you to write it in the style of a well-known writer or author. It could be anyone or anything: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary Shelley, Dennis Wheatley, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Barbara Cartland, The Sun newspaper or even the Court Circular. It doesn't really matter. To get you going, here are two examples I thought up this morning over breakfast:

 

 

" To Sherlock Holmes, it was always that egg. On a stormy night- an especially tempestuous event in the autumn of 1888- I returned to my well-remembered chambers, seized with a keen desire to see my old friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes again. The vile wind howled in the hearth, and the windows rattled with the fury of the equinoxical gales. Holmes held out an egg to me with his long, nervous, nicotined-stained fingers.

" A fascinating observation, Watson", said he, lighting a cigarette. "It is simplicity itself. Take this egg- you will observe that this specimen has a brown shell. It was a simple deduction. You will recollect our brief sojourn in Mrs Hudson's pantry this morning. I noticed immediately that this particular egg was speckled with a panoply of coloured spots. It was the only egg in the box with this queer colouring, akin in many ways to the colour of that Piccadilly mud I had previously observed splashed, in fragments, on to those turn-up cuffs of your trousers last week. The remaining eggs- and you will observe that there are five of them- are, indeed, of a lighter hue, hence my double deduction."

He chuckled to himself and threw the egg into a pan, having- in a most fastidious fashion- removed the shell with his nimble yellow-stained fingers. "Pray, take note Watson, that I have raised the water temperature to a precise one hundred and one degrees".

I expressed wonder at my friend's erudition. "How long will it take to cook?" I remarked, laughing at the ease in which he carried out his work. "Two and a half minutes, precisely" he cried, a glint of triumph in his eye. "When I hear you explain, I replied, 'the whole thing seems so ridiculously simple, that I must confess to being baffled as to how you come up with your reasoning". Holmes threw back his head and laughed: "A mere trifle, my dear Watson." I raised an eyebrow. "Elementary", said he."

 

(With apologies to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

 

And here's another one, with apologies to Ian Fleming:

 

"The steam and smell and heat of a kitchen is nauseating at seven o' clock in the morning. To James Bond, life was, indeed, a bitch. Ignoring his hangover, he stretched out for his twelve-and-a-half inch, burnt orange, enamel saucepan with its egg-matic, multi-porous, teflon surface which says Le Creuset.

Bond liked to have a good breakfast. But you never knew what they put in their eggs, these days. M had warned him about this only last night during a game of contract bridge at Blade's. Bond re-assessed his egg with suspicion. Could it contain the salmonella virus, genus motile entobacteria?

He looked at the egg with a new respect. A speckled brown special laid by that pretty little Marans hen, a real doll of a girl with the 32 Double D bust he'd had flown in from Goldfinger the previous morning. What to make of it all?

With a studied indifference, Bond let the egg slip between his fingers. The gambit succeeded. So! He'd let May, his trusty Scottish housekeeper clear it up tomorrow, though there was certainly going to be one hell of a mess to pay for later. Bond shrugged. He wasn't going to let SMERSH get away with that one!"

Please email your entries to me at [email protected] by the 3rd May. I'll be posting a brand new copy of Grub Street's excellent Taste of Portugual to the winner. Any other amusing pastiches sent to me will also, of course, be posted up on The Greasy Spoon. Good Luck!