Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galeggsy – the EoMEoTE#6 round-up

Six months, many eggs;
And still the entries roll in.
Twenty! I am pleased.

The last of the haikus for a while I PROMISE!!  Once again, fellow EoMEoTers have surprised and delighted me with their enthusiasm, their creativity – and of course the downright deliciousness of their posts.  Twenty participants (and twenty one creations, if you count Andrew’s first attempt!) have put together enough eggy variety to keep us busy for another month.  Read ’em and cheep.

The first participant to crack and e-mail me was the ever-punctual Stephanie from The Happy Sorceress – this is the second time she has managed to submit an entry before I have even posted the announcement!!  She was the first of three entries this month who decided to leave the beaten track of “eggs-and-bacon-make-mine-sunny-side-up” and produce a sweet egg on toast creation.  Her sweetened eggs on chocolate French toast looks intriguing – and I love the eggs cut into shapes!!

Jennifer from Taste Everything Once was one of many participants this month who found that the end of the month kind of snuck up on them and before they knew it they had to make an eggy/toasty creation at short notice.  She seems to have done an admirable job with poached eggs, bacon and seared scallops on toasted baguette – both the description and the picture are very tempting!  But we want more info on the couscous eating dog next time 😉

Poor Sam of Becks and Posh:  she had to work over the weekend and the effort left her brain all fried (or should that be scrambled??).  But she goes all Blue Peter on us and presents us with something she made earlier: a versatile dish of oeufs en cocotte, creamy mushrooms with sherry & thyme, prosciutto and toasted levain.  I could picture this dish as a sumptuous breakfast/brunch, or as a lunch dish with a fresh green salad.  Or, according to Sam’s other half, it could be a fabulous starter at a fancy dinner – and he rates it as “really, really, really good”!

Foodnerd had a tough time participating in this month’s EoMEoTE – she has been moving house and describes her contribution as end-of-month-moved-to-Chicago-no-kitchen-egg-and-chorizo-on-tortilla-scramble.  Phew!  The resulting dish could well re-ignite the debate about the meaning of “on” as seen in “Egg on Toast Extravaganza” – the tortilla ends up being integral to the dish rather than a supporting structure.  But hey, what’s a preposition between friends!

In the EoMEoTE spirit of multiculturalism, our next contribution from Sarah over at The Delicious Life tells us a bit about Passover and Jewish culinary traditions before treating us to matzo brei – a delicious-sounding scramble of egg, soaked matzoh pieces and a variety of whatever vegetables you find in your fridge!  It seems that she’s carrying on the trend started by foodnerd and mixing the toast with the egg – but as I said: in, on, whatever…!

Next up was Nupur from One Hot Stove who takes a trip back to her childhood and invites us along to savour the taste of an Indian Railways omelet sandwich.  This is apparently often served on one of India’s 11,000 trains and involves a spicy omelette folded and sandwiched between slices of bread.  You could not have designed a mor appropriate dish for EoMEoTE!

Staying with spicy, eggy theme, we have newcomer Upulie.  She doesn’t (yet!) have a food blog of her own, but was so keen to join in for EoMEoTE#6 that she e-mailed me her post for fried-steamed egg with Dukkah, tahini, Balsamic vinegar and lemon.  I’d call that a pretty good and not-at-all-shaky start – now you have a lot to live up to for next month’s edition!!

Augustus Gloop at Grab Your Fork laughs off the EoMEoTE non-judgemental philosophy and starts with the bold statement that “in the fried egg world you’re either a runny-yolk person, or you’re a… Neanderthal”!!  Augustus then shares with us the secret of warm and sunny extra runny fried eggs – the ingenious way to guaranteed runny yolks, every time! So let’s all climb the evolutionary ladder and go with runny yolks, folks.

Santos over at The Scent of Green Bananas followed the sweet trend and came up with French toast with chestnut vanilla creme and frozen egg custard.  After deciding that this just does not sound yummy, she also gives us a French rendition of her dish, along with some interesting technical kitchen terms like “mauled” and “pummelled”.  Not to mention her comparative analysis of international varieties of white bread.  Maybe she could publish an illustrated field guide for us?

Tanvi of From the Pantry goes with mini artichoke and spinach frittatas on toast – they look too cute and I’m sure they’d also make fab hors d’ouvres!  Besides, anything with artichokes in gets my vote for sure…  Clearly great minds think alike, as you’ll see when you get to my contribution!

Natalie from Natalie Buxton treats us to a description of her paragon of eggy simplicity – bacon, mushroom and fried egg tortillas.  But alas, her fiance was out with the digital camera, so there is no visual record of the pared down masterpiece.  But we hear it went down very well with a Lemon Lime & Angosture bitters…

Last month’s gracious hostess with the mostest Johanna from The Passionate Cook still found time this weekend (after hosting me and Nick for a fab fondue – thanks Jo!) to contribute to EoMEoTE.  She whipped up a pea and mint omelette – perfectly browned on the outside, perfectly fluffy within.  Looks fab (and that tablecloth looks strangely familiar ;-))

Saint from Dogfight at Bankstown returns for a second EoMEoTE contribution – and once again, it’s an eggstremely liberal interpretation of the theme.  But we do try to encourage lateral thinking around here, plus Saint has the added multicultural cachet of EoMEoTE’s first Eastern Orthodox contribution.  Despite spending that day at a celebratory Greek Easter meal and being encouraged to “eat, eat, dreeeenk, dreeeenk”, Saint still had the presence of mind to post a Greek Easter bread for EoMEoTE.  OK, there’s bread, and the red things on top are either eggy-shaped totatoes or if you squint hard enough, little red Easter eggs – and that’s good enough for us!!

Niki over at Esurientes was another one who lost track of the time and suddenly realised it was already the end of the month.  What to do, what to do…  She rummaged around in her fridge to see what she could find – and came up with caviar!!  (I, on the other hand, would find some limp celery, whipping cream past its sell-by date and a pair of antique bell peppers.  Such is my life.).  The caviar worked very nicely as part of a luxury combo of eouf en cocotte, caviar and buttery toast soldiers.  Pretty good for stuff scrounged from the fridge!!

Andrew from Spittoon is such a trooper.  Finding himself trapped in a hotel room at the end of the month with nothing but floppy white bread (aka “raw toast”!), eggs, an industrial strength microwave, a whisk and a toaster, he gamely attempts to make a contribution.  Sadly we don’t get to see the results as he describes them as “something steaming and rubbery amongst several large pieces of crockery”. But at least he assures us that no whisks were hurt in the making of this entry. Good thing, though, that he got home in time to post a “proper” entry – and oh what an entry!!  Andrew’s is the final of this month’s flurry of sweet entries and he’s interpreted the definition of egg in the most delightful way – melted Kinder chocolate egg sauce over ice cream with toasted brioche fingers.  Oh wow!! Makes me kinda peckish… 😉

More a case of Scrabbled eggs than scrambled was Peasprout‘s contribution.  It seems there’s been some Scrabble playing at Chez Sprout lately, and you will see evidence in the pictures!  So if not scrambled, then why not…. fried?  And maybe you can incorporate that into a stack of toasted desem, fried egg, fresh avocado and sriracha sauce?  Hmmm, I think that would work quite nicely thank you!

And then, of course, we have Eggy Founding Father Anthony’s post over at Spiceblog.  It seems that not only is he making toast, he also wants to be toast – let’s just say I’m not standing near him when there are thunderclouds about!! No, it’s not that bad really… From his rampant culinary imagination, he gives us eggs Benedict – a papal tribute.  Lots of very imaginative imagery and religious mysteries in there. And of course, the hidden sting in the tail is that the egg-centric EoMEoTE is in fact a tribute to the long-suppressed Sacred Feminine.  What next – “The EoMEoTE Code”?? 😉

Chubby Hubby of Hungry Hungry Hungry makes an impressive debut this month!  At first he was a little worried that the rather substantial chunk of meat between the egg and the toast might disqualify him – but clearly he hasn’t seen the meatball-egg-macaroni-cheese-toast creation that made it into a previous EoMEoTE!!  His beef burger topped with Gruyere and a fried egg on toasted walnut bread sounds absolutely delicious and very impressive – and wait till you hear about his accompanying salad of rocket, spinach, cherry tomatoes and sliced almonds, with a Champagne vinegar-vinaigrette.  Methinks this is one guy to keep an eye on in future events!

Flapping in at the last minute was Viv from Seattle Bon Vivant, who’s been having an egg-and-carb weekend, so it would appear!  Two quiches AND the EoMEoTE entry! She comes up with an avocado, mushroom and bacon omelette – oh yes please!!  There is very little to beat the combination of rich, creamy avocado and crisp salty bacon.  Good choice, Viv!

And last but not least, there’s me – the Cooksister (who is in danger of being re-named the Haikuksister, after all my recent poetic and not-so-poetic efforts!!). I was overcome by the spirit of worker solidarity and created a May Day frittata featuring my new favourite ingredients – peppadews!  The frittata turned out to be good, wholesome food to give you energy while you’re waiting for the Great Leap Forward.

And that’s all, my chickens.  Thank you all for participating, for putting up with my rape of the Japanese poetic tradition and for your collective enthusiasm.  Next month, all posts are to be submitted as Petrarchan sonnets.*

*OK, just joking .  Good old Shakespearean sonnets will do.  😛

**!!STOP PRESS!!**  This just in:  two more contributions to EoMEoTE#6!!  The first is just fashionably late in the spirit of EoMEoTE; the second was on time but I didn’t know about it, so now I present them both to you here.

First up was Sue from Noodlebowl who treats us to a yummy description of breakfast burgers – English muffins layered with cheese, a mini rissole and a hard soft boiled egg.  What is this mysterious creature?  Well, basically an egg that’s hard on the outside but still all golden runny yolk on the inside.  Sue tells us there’s no neat way to eat this – but hey, whoever said eating was a neat passtime??  Check out the cool photos as well, with swirly steam coming off the egg!

And then there was Nicole from Craftapalooza who does something I’ve always threatened to do but have yet to get round to doing – she cooks her eggs in a muffin tin, along with sliced ham and a baby tomato.  The result looks delicious – crisped edges to the ham, the egg just set and some New Norcia sourdough toast soldiers to mop up the messy bits.  Sounds like the perfect start to the weekend, really!

And that, laydeeeeez and gents, brings our total this month to twenty-two contributors!!  This is definitely the new EoMEoTE record & I can’t wait to see what next month holds in store!!