Egg Preparation

Eggs: "Cooked" or "Boiled" - Charlie Gifford
             Bruce Trinque Replies
             On Preparing Private Eyes - Charlie Gifford
Hard-cooked Eggs
             Baked Eggs - Lois
             The Perfect Hard-boiled Egg - Anna Ravano
Killick's Poached Eggs In Wine
             Charlezzzzz Asks
             From The Joy of Cooking - Astrid Bear
Poached Eggs - Doug Essinger-Hileman
             The Perfect Dish Of Poached Eggs - Jim Klein
             Oeufs en Meurette - Clive Kane
             Poached Egg Technique - John Gosden
             Killick's Overdone Poached Eggs in Wine - Charlezzzzz Muñoz
             Poached Egg Success - Bob Fleisher
             Astrid Bear's Poached Egg Technique
Soft-Cooked Eggs
             John Bannon Asks
             Ray (at the Bay) Martin's Soft-Cooked Eggs

Eggs: "Cooked" or "Boiled" - Charlie Gifford
In the interest of clarity, I must point out that the proper term is "hard-cooked" or "soft-cooked" eggs. Eggs are never boiled. Soft-cooked eggs can be further described by the number of cooking minutes; as 2 minute eggs or 3 minute eggs. On a more personal note, I prefer coddled eggs to shirred eggs. They make a nice change from soft-cooked eggs by replacing the shell with a proper British porcelain container.

Bruce Trinque Replies
Forsooth! Nest thing you'll know, the man will be trying to tell us that Sam Spade was a hard-cooked private eye ...

On Preparing Private Eyes - Charlie Gifford
One prepares private eyes and eggs differently. Mr. Spade was no doubt a bit on the tough side and probably would need to be boiled a bit then braised at a low temperature for a long time. Most likely the generous use of herbs and spices would be needed to cover the flavor of the gumshoes.

Hard-cooked Eggs
Baked Eggs - Lois
The original recipe called for a 1 quart ring mold, a dozen eggs, and you supposedly ended up with a lovely ring, into the center of which you stuck some salad. When the ring got cut, oh mystery, it had yolks in it like a hard boiled egg, surrounded by whites.
Well, I have these little mini-bread pans but no ring molds, so I tried it with them and 6 eggs, and darned if I didn't end up with a square 1/2 dozen hard-boiled egg loaf I could slice. Seriously, if you use hard boiled eggs for salad, you don't have to boil and shell the darned things, you can bake them in a loaf and then chop up the loaf and get the same effect. The end product is exactly like hard boiled eggs, but no muss, no fuss. Here's how.
Put your eggs into your shape, whatever. You just crack them and put them gently into a buttered form, either loaf or ring. You don't want to break the yolks, or mix them or anything. Just put them in and let them settle in by themselves. I put six in the mini-loaf pan.
You put your form full of eggs(in my case a mini-loaf pan) into a bigger form (in my case a regular-sized loaf pan), and put hot water in your big form, at least half-way up the thing your eggs are in. The way you bake custard.
Then you bake the whole contraption in a 350 degree oven until the whites are set. Time will vary depending upon the number of eggs, thickness of your forms, etc. It took mine about a 1/2 hour. I ended up with a sort of egg loaf, all white, and when you cooled and sliced it there were nice round cooked yolks inside. You could serve the loaf alone, or chop it up. Wish I'd known about this years ago, when I made lots of salads calling for eggs, and what a pain they always were. Really, you couldn't tell the difference between hard-boiled eggs, and these.

The Perfect Hard-boiled Egg - Anna Ravano
How to get a perfect hard-boiled egg, if you're not in a hurry:
The egg should be at room temperature. Put it in cold water, bring to the boil, turn off the heat, cover and let stand for 20 minutes. Shell under very cold water.
This way you get a bright yellow yolk, without that awful greenish outer tinge. The taste is slightly different, too, I believe.

Killick's Poached Eggs In Wine
Charlezzzzz Asks
Toward the end of Thirteen, Killick is overheard foully carrying on about Jack's delay in coming for breakfast.
Killick had prepared poached eggs in red wine.
I'd make 'em tomorrow if I knew how. Well, I sort of know how -- just substitute red wine for water and boil the damn eggs.
But it would take a mort of wine to float the eggs proper, and my main question is what to do with the wine after. Will it be drinkable? Will it be flavored with egg? Must I throw it out? Or can I serve it to my guests? What would be a good name for such recycled wine? (Van Duff?)

From The Joy of Cooking - Astrid Bear
The older Joy of Cooking offers up this, which sounds pretty darned good:
Combine in a skillet:
1 cup dry red wine
1 crushed clove of garlic
2 T minced onion or shallot
1/4 t. salt
1/8 t. pepper
bouquet garni of parley, bay leaf, and thyme
Heat to boiling point, reduce heat and simmer for 3 minutes, then remove bouquet garni. Slide eggs into the mixture and poach. Remove eggs and place on slices of fried bread rubbed with garlic.
Strain the wine, put it back in the skillet and thicken with Kneaded Butter (2T butter and 2 T flour rubbed together). Pour sauce over eggs and serve.
Or, I'd make bruscetta with olive oil and garlic instead of the fried bread, and reduce the wine to 1/4 C or less, maybe adding what Dear Julia calls "enrichment butter", 1 t. or so stirred in after the sauce is off the heat.

Poached Eggs - Doug Essinger-Hileman
Bring your poaching liquid to the point of simmering. The usual poaching liquid for an egg is water with a bit of vinegar in it. I suspect that you could substitute a bit of wine for the vinegar, but I suspect that that isn't the meaning of the name. Introduce the egg into the water and cook until set to your preference. The easiest way to introduce said egg into the water is to swirl the water with a spoon until a vortex is formed. The slip the egg into the middle of the vortex. This keeps the liquidy egg in one place long enough to set. As for the poached egg in wine, I suspect that this is referring to serving the poached egg in a wine sauce. A wonderful sauce can be had from Burgundy.

The Perfect Dish Of Poached Eggs - Jim Klein
And to make the perfect dish of poached eggs, make sure you add a small patlette of butter, a generous helping of peeled and chopped jalapenos, and a couple of spoonfuls of grated parmesano to the freshly poached blancos.
Warm the bowl before you serve the eggs.
On a separate plate serve crisp bacon and an english muffin drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with the usual spices.
You may thank me at your leisure.
This is a dish for the gods. Trust me.
Like Bo knows football, Jim knows groceries.

Oeufs en Meurette - Clive Kane
Which I've found a recipe - I knew I'd seen one somewhere. This is from Floyd on France, where they call this Oeufs en Meurette, apparently:
2 slices bacon per person, cubed
2 oz (50g) butter
2 tablespoons oil
1 clove chopped garlic
1 chopped onion
1 bouquet garni
2 pints (1litre) red wine
2 eggs per person
sliced bread
pork or goose fat
Fry bacon in butter and oil. Add garlic, onion and bouquet garni. Add wine and simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Remove bacon and strain sauce. Return sauce and bacon to pan, add eggs and poach.
Fry slices of bread in goose/pork fat, serve eggs on bread and cover with sauce and bacon cubes.
Mr Floyd neglects to mention whether any leftover wine would remain drinkable, but I suspect not. In fact, I'd probably only use wine for this dish which had been undrinkable to begin with.

Poached Egg Technique - John Gosden
Poached eggs ain't boiled eggs nohow. You heat the liquid to a gentle simmer, swirl it and decant the shelled egg into the vortex, continuing to simmer until the white is set. Leastways, that's how you make ordinary poached eggs. I would guess in this case the wine accompanies the eggs as a sort of sauce - or to dip your sippets of toast.

Killick's Overdone Poached Eggs in Wine - Charlezzzzz Muñoz
Dear me, that ain't nothing like Killick's poached eggs in red wine. I'd quote his exact words but I was brought up not to use such language except at sea: well, the hell with scruples...
Killick yells, loud enough to be heard in the Gunroom, ..."delayed the fucking poached eggs in red wine till they was fucking grape-shot in horse piss," wch is perhaps the most nautical sentence in the canon.
The main thing, to him was that, when he poached Jack's eggs in red wine (and we've got a couple of good recipes now) he and Grimble had the wine left over to glug down. I suppose that's why he was so upset when Jack was aloft and came down late -- the red wine was getting overcooked.
And what Killick would call John's dipped "sippets" of toast I leave to yr imagination.

Poached Egg Success - Bob Fleisher
I was always intimidated by this technique, in the same way that I've always been put off by the prospect of folding an omelet solely by flicking one's wrist; I can't imagine getting the coordination just right to keep the vortex going until the white is set. But I recently read another approach that, having tried it, I find works just as well. Set the water a-simmer, put the shelled egg in a cup (I use a shallow one), pour the egg into the water, and hold the cup around the egg, with the rim slightly submerged, to keep it together for five or ten seconds. Then remove the cup; the egg white will be set, and you can poach it to the desired degree of doneness. No need for a vortex. I recently made poached eggs for my partner for the first time in 22 years, and the technique worked perfectly.

Astrid Bear's Poached Egg Technique
There's another method, which works especially well on eggs that are less than fresh from under the hen. The whites gradually lose their cohesiveness, and tend to stream out into the poaching water. So, take the egg in its shell, and gently roll it around in the poaching liquid for about 30 seconds to a minute. Then crack it into the liquid, and the white will be ever so slightly precooked, and hold together better.

Soft-Cooked Eggs
John Bannon Asks
Speaking of eggs- where does the 3 minute soft boiled egg idea come from?
It takes me about 7 minutes to soft boil an egg from the Fridge. Are we talking about fresh eggs right from the nest and warm? I try to take the eggs out early and let them sit i warm water for about 10 minutes. Then I can come closer to the 3 min egg.

Ray (at the Bay) Martin's Soft-Cooked Eggs
I always understood (and it seems to work fine in practice) that the three minutes is the time counted from when the eggs come to the boil; having been placed in cold water to start with. This whole process would probably take 7 or 8 minutes - not allowing the 2 seconds or so to prick a tiny hole in the big end to avoid the shell cracking.