It’s a beautiful sunny day, the lake is blue and a peaceful
smooth, a perfect day for my husband’s quintessentially favorite breakfast
which he hasn’t had in a very long time - a veal chop, two four-minute poached
eggs, toast and coffee. I happened to be perusing the meat department of
Safeway when they were stocking the discounted section. There they were, two
veal chops. (Ok, here’s the caveat, my husband is the biggest animal lover of
all time having loved a menagerie of pets but it not a vegetarian. Whatever our meat politics, they were there and they would have gone to
waste.)
This is how you pull off a perfect breakfast on a boat that
allows only one electric appliance at a time. Coffee made, I crushed a couple
of garlic cloves readied for the butter in which I would brown the chops.
I
brought a small pan of water to a boil readying it for the eggs.
While it was
coming to a boil, I lined a cup with plastic wrap, carefully broke an egg into
it then gathered the top and secured with dental floss I keep in the kitchen
for this purpose. I readied two eggs in this manner.
Turning the water off, I heated the frying pan. in the hot pan I melted
a couple tablespoons of butter and added the garlic for a minute until it
started to brown then spooned most of it out so as not to have burned garlic.
Then, I seared the chops, browning them beautifully.
Off went the burner, on
went the toaster oven to 400 degrees and in went the chops to finish cooking.
They didn’t take long to reach the desired temperature so
carefully measured with my new digital meat thermometer. Off went the oven and
on went the burner to bring the water back to a boil.
Into the quickly reboiled
water went the carefully wrapped eggs. The timer on my cell phone set to four-minutes guaranteed perfectly poached eggs. When the bell rang, off went the burner
and into the toaster oven went two slices of 15 grain toast.
I spooned the eggs
carefully out of their wrapping and onto the plate next to the perfectly
browned chops. The bread nicely toasted, I turned out a beautiful plate of a chop next to two perfectly poached eggs with toast and butter.
