POACHED!



My new Kindle, a thoughtful Christmas present from The Pig (who always gives thoughtful presents, whereas, yours truly, Mrs. Talling, almost never does) came loaded with the New Oxford Dictionary. The small grey, perfectly readable screen on the device informs me that the word poach comes from the Old French pochier, which originally meant to “enclose in a small bag.” Now it often means to “illegally hunt or catch game or fish on land that is not one’s own.”

I must admit, I lost interest in writing Mrs. Talling’s Pig over the holidays. I could blame the holiday season, but when I say that, it feels as if I am poaching, i.e., taking something from “land that is not [my] own.” Since I have been underly employed for some time now, I can hardly claim that I was stressed by the time off or lack thereof, and since I did not buy a single present for a single person, I cannot say that an excess of participation in the holiday madness is responsible for my loss of enthusiasm.

In fact, in many areas of my life I think I have been perpetually poaching—if not actively taking things that were not mine, at least allowing people to believe that I owned qualities or knowledge that I, in fact, did not. For example, because I have written and edited a bunch of books and articles that cover movement training for actors, some people assume that I must have trained extensively in that area. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not a good dancer, and I am not certified in combat choreography. I never went to Paris and studied with Jaques Lecoq. My experience of the plastiques is utterly cursory.

I wanted to write about these trainings because I longed for the knowledge and the discipline, not because I had it.

And while we are confessing, I should add that even though I worked for the Metropolitan Opera, what I know about opera could fit into a thimble and what I like about opera would take up even less real estate. I never studied Latin and even though I was raised by people who spoke French, German, and Dutch, and took Spanish and Russian in school, I am utterly at sea when a language other than English is spoken. What else? I don’t remember any of the plots from Shakespeare aside from a few of the comedies AND I tend to find productions of Shakespeare’s plays boring. In addition, I have never read the Bible cover to cover, and I tend to forget all of the Greek myths.

However, I do know a fair amount about cooking. Although I tend to approach all recipes as the “great leveler”—any cuisine, any recipe can be bent to include the ingredients and especially the leftovers I already have in my refrigerator—I do make a wide of variety of dishes that encompass a plethora of cooking techniques.

Yet there is one simple technique that I never mastered. Much as I avoid talk of opera so that my lack of knowledge will not be glaringly obvious, I eschewed making this dish so that I would not be found out. Which brings us to the other meaning of poach, which is “to simmer in a small amount of water.” Specifically, to poach an egg.

Over the years, I have attempted to poach an egg upon rare occasions. For example, when I made a perfect Hollandaise sauce for steamed asparagus, and there were leftovers, I envisioned those green beauties enthroned upon a half an English muffin, toasted to golden perfection. And, between the slender chartreuse stalks, cloaked in lemony smoothness, and the wheaty crunch, there would be a soft and glistening white orb, which, when pierced by a fork, would release a warm and unctuous flow of orange yellow center.

Unfortunately, the egg transmogrified into something quite other when I attempted to concretize this image. Instead of inner and outer layers of distinction, upon hitting the boiling water, the egg became agitated, soon transforming itself into hard cooked threads of mottled white and yellow, more suited to egg drop soup than to variations on Eggs Benedict. Thereafter, I never renounced poached eggs, mind you; I just occluded them from my repertoire.

I had some hope, when a friend gave me an egg poacher for the microwave oven. It seemed so efficient, a simple round of plastic with perfect, circular indentations into which one was instructed to crack the eggs. Then the poacher was to be placed inside the oven, the power level and the time set, and all one had to do was to be mesmerized as the carousel twirled until the timer announced completion. Alas, as with so much microwave “cooking” simplicity did not guarantee a consistent, or even an edible, result. Sometimes the eggs were uncooked. Sometimes they were overcooked. At any rate they lacked a “je ne se qua”—which I am allowed to say, even though I don’t speak French—they were boiled eggs without the shells, no matter how done they were. I abandoned the concept once again.

In the meantime, my understanding and preparation of scrambled eggs had actually grown. Having read far too many diet books in my younger years, I assumed that the whole point of scrambling and omelets was to make the eggs as big as possible. Eggs should be puffy with whipped whites, frothy from added seltzer and baking soda, and placed beneath the broiler so that they rose even higher. After a long, long time, I realized that The Pig is actually quite discerning when it comes to taste and texture. He has no interest in a tough and puffy hugeness of eggs, and actually prefers a small and creamy serving. I learned how to be patient, stirring and stirring as the beaten eggs slowly coalesced into dense yellow curds and cream.

But as this year begins, and I struggle with a general malaise, which might or might not be attributable to the holiday or the post-holiday blues, I find myself drawn to dishes that go back to my childhood. Not necessarily the ones that I loved the best, or the ones that were the fussiest or most tied to my ethnicity—whatever that is—but the dishes that were sort of common and sustaining at the time, and which I have either avoided or overlooked in later life. For example, I made Boston Baked Beans the other day. Of course, I made a variation, because we had lots of maple syrup, leftover barbeque sauce, and dried white beans, but no molasses, tomato sauce, or kidney beans—but it came out well. Actually, I’m not sure if The Pig liked it better than Bushes, but it was respectable.

And so, yesterday morning when I woke up, and was lying in bed, waiting for the sun to join me, I started obsessing about poached eggs, and I thought I would give them another try. I had no new equipment or techniques, but I was feeling pretty confident. “Just remember,” I told myself, “vinegar in the water, and stir into a cyclone before you add the eggs.” I looked at the Pig, still sleeping—he had worked an insane number of hours the night before. So I crept off to the kitchen, and I did a trial run. I put water into a small, one-and-a-half quart sauce pan, and brought it to a boil. In the meantime, I cracked an egg into a custard dish, just to make sure that it was unbroken. I then added a tablespoon of vinegar to the water. When the water boiled, I stirred it vigorously, creating a whirlpool in the middle of the liquid. I slid the egg out of the dish and into the epicenter.

It held together! The edges feathered delicately, and made white, circular trails, but the mass held. I could see the white cooking while the yellow remained distinct and uncooked. I put the cover on the pot and left it there for 90 seconds, then fished it out with a slotted spoon.

The white was glistening and soft, only slightly resistant and rubbery, just as I’d dreamed. I had mistimed the yellow, though; the center was still underdone, and the yolk not thick enough. Still, I was quite pleased.

When The Pig got up and started shuffling about, I asked him if he’d like eggs for breakfast. He said yes. Our kitchen is small, so I waited as he dripped a fresh cup of coffee and took it over to the computer. Then I cracked two eggs into the custard cup, and put a half a roll into the toaster oven. Having had some difficulty removing my trial egg from the saucepan with the slotted spoon, I decided that this time I would try a shallower and smaller one-quart frying pan. I added the water and the vinegar and let it come to a boil, then stirred it into a perfectly contained storm. Then I slipped the eggs into the middle, where they behaved themselves just as perfectly. I put the cover on the pan, and this time, during the two and half minutes I allowed the eggs to simmer, I removed the roll from the toaster and slathered it with butter. Then I lifted the delicate and glowing eggs out of the water bath and put them on top, with a bit of salt and pepper.

The Pig pronounced it very tasty and perfectly cooked.

I cannot tell you why, but this has been my most satisfying experience of the New Year.