I did say that the roundup was happening “sometime this week” – and clearly I was going to stretch the week as far as common sense allowed. That’s what you get for entrusting a procrastinator with the job of doing a round-up on the most famously unpunctual foodie event on the Web 😉 We like to be consistent around here! (And just by the by, in light of the event’s theme, shouldn’t it be an oval-up rather than a round-up? Answers on a postcard to Cooksister…)
I have to say that I was overwhelmed by the response to this month’s event – as Anthony pointed out we have had a 300% increase on previous months’ participation!! Way to go, all egg-on-toasters!! Yes, we know this isn’t as serious an event as some of the other fine foodblog events and yes, it did originate as a private joke between Anthony and me. But I am rather fond of it. We spend so much time cooking exotic stuff and blogging about it that often don’t have time to write up the simple stuff. And by making the theme so basic, we get people joining in who would ordinarily not be interested in the fancy schmancy food normally associated with food blogs. So we here at EoMEoTE like to think we’re are doing our bit to make the blogosphere fully-inclusive, non-judgemental and non-discriminatory – we don’t discriminate on the basis of age, colour, creed, sexual orientation, star signs or culinary ability. Or lack of punctuality 😉
The one nagging question is how long we can possibly hope to keep this up – surely there are only so many ways to cook eggs on toast? Aaah, but then we have the wise words of Oscar Wilde (thanks Andrew!):
“An egg is always an adventure; the next one may be different.“
I think that’s going to be the official motto of EoMEoTE from now on. And so, without further ado, here is the stellar cast of this month’s production of EoMEoTE#3. Entries this month ranged from the classy to the basic to an-alternative-interpretation-of-toast to the the gimme-toast-with-everything approach – and I thought they were all great! So let’s see who we have in the eggbasket…
From Hawaii we have Reid, who gets my award for taking us back to the basics that inspired this event in the first place, i.e. “it’s the end of the month, I have no fancy ingredients left and can’t afford to buy more, what the heck we’ll have egg on toast”. Why, you may ask? Because he manages to use that much-maligned luncheon meat, Spam®, in his entry – and makes it look nutritious and delicious way beyond its reputation! He calls it a “Local Boy” omelette on toasted pao doce (sweet Portuguee bread) and describes it as scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese and Spam®, garnished with spring onions and black pepper on pao doce. I’ll never look at Spam® the same way again!
From one island to another – from Guam we have Santos who started the ball rolling (and got the boys all whipped into stiff peaks, so to speak…) in the classy egg on toast category with her scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and cress on toast – a feast for the eyes and the mouth. She also featured the talents of a young lady who appears to be playing the female lead in Troilus and Cressida and has gone for a bio-degradable outfit. Oh well, anything to get the boys to eat their greens!
From San Francisco we have Sam who ended up participating purely by accident – she was feeling under the weather and all she craved was scrambled eggs on toast with prosciutto. So she whipped up a batch, being careful to keep her black pom-pom scarf (which she was wearing for medicinal purposes!) out of the way. It must have been pretty good as she turned down Fred’s World Famous Pasta in favour of her eggs of toast… Now if that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is!
Off to the other side of the globe now to Australia to visit Anthony, co-founder of the phenomenon that is EoMEoTE. After his back-to-basics contribution from around the campfire last month, this month he gussied up his contribution a bit and presented us with an idea (dare I say it) poached from a cafe he visited on his recent travels – French toast topped with bacon and banana. This gets bonus points for using up stale bread (part of our recycling effort here at EoMEoTE) and if you read the comments you’ll see that in he spare time he’s also growing penicillin for developing countries and working on bringing about world peace. But he’s very modest and doesn’t like to talk about it much…;-)
OK, after that brief spell in a parallel universe, it’s off to Seattle for some pure indulgence. Viv has taken the basics of eggs and toast and added one of life’s most fabulous indulgences – truffles! She presents us with the far-classier-than-I-could-ever-hope-to-be truffled eggs on toasted challah – scrambled eggs with liberal lashings of truffle butter. I felt faint with pleasure just thinking what that might taste like… Maybe next time we need a recipe or a supplier’s name for the truffle butter too!
From there it’s off to Japan to visit Tokyogoat – he gets bonus points for displaying the EoMEoTE logo on his site and for being the latest entry! But sadly he does not tell us what exactly his very yummy-looking egg-on-toast creation consists of. My educated guess from the picture is a fried egg & avocado burgers on toast?? Please, Tokyogoat, tell us the truth! It certainly looks as if that could satisfy your daily saturated fat requirements. For the month of March!!
Somebody who did not sumbit an entry but who has posted a fab egg and toast creation this week is Johanna right here in London. I haven’t been able to get hold of her as she is on vacation, but until instructed otherwise, I though I’d included her in the roundup as an unofficial entry. She came up with the innovative pumpkin seed scrambled eggs with speck soldiers – the “soldiers” being little sticks of toast wrapped in bacon/prosciutto/speck. The use of pumpkin seeds is apparently extensive in her native Austrian cooking – and I can only imagine the interesting nutty taste they would impart to the eggs!
From the classy eggs on toast category, we move on to the alternative toast category – starting off in London with meeeeeee, the Cooksister! I took the view that bread that has been heated in any way could be classified as toast – I figured that EoMEoT is flexible enough to allow for free personal expression. What I came up with was the rather delicious Featherbed Eggs – second cousins to little individual souffles and open to customization by the addition of various ingrredients. Think savoury bread and butter pudding. Think yummmmmmmm.
From there, we hop across to the US again (California, I think??) where Alice abandoned toast in favour of English muffins for her postmodernist culinary creation of Four-point egg on toast. The name comes from the creation’s Weight-Watcher’s points value – Alice explains that although she loves McDonalds Sausage McMuffins, they total a whopping 11 points, while this eerily similar creation clocks in at only four. It’s also a poke in the eye to food snobs around the world – check out the ingredient list. You go girl!
From there it’s back over to the UK and Andrew who presents us with either a deconstruction of a full English Breakfast or an Anglicised take on the McDonalds Sausage McMuffin (depending on your point of view!). This takes the form of a poached duck egg and black pudding on a toasted muffin – with liberal lashings of Cornish butter and garnished with cherry tomatoes. Oh my. For those of you not from this part of the world, here’s some info on black pudding – I have to say that I wasn’t entirely convinced when I was first offered this delicacy. But I also have to say that it’s surprisingly delicious – and fried in a little butter on an English muffin with a duck egg for company, I would imagine it to be positively delightful.
And then comes the one entry in a category on its own – kind of like a supersized egg-on-toast, really. For this we have to return to Tokyo where Rob (egged on – geddit, geddit??) by Tokyogoat, presents for your viewing and eating pleasure egg on meatballs on cheese on macaroni and cheese on toast. No, you read that correctly. It is in fact ALL part of the link and ALL the ingredients do feature in the dish. And he has followed the rules completely – there is toast and there is an egg. And they brought along some friends from all the major food groups, so it seems! Less of a breakfast and more of an event. And for those of you who thought the ways of serving eggs on toast were finite and boring – bah humbug to you when you see this picture! You could not have predicted it in a million years, so bonus points to Rob for sheer barefaced culinary cheek and ingenuity.
And that about wraps it up, unless (in the spirit of EoMEoTE) there are any more late entries?? If so, don’t panic, there’s always a place for latecomers here! So until next month, that’s a wrap. And given this month’s spectacular nunmber of participants and diverse dishes, the challenge is on to find some more ways to serve your standard weekend breakfast of eggs & toast. I await EoMEoTE#4 with great eggspectations.