What do you suppose would happen if you boiled some eggs on the stove and left them there boiling for a couple of hours until all the water evaporated and the temperature continued to rise…? I found out recently when I put a pan of them to boil, all neatly arranged, and then… forgot all about them.
I don’t actually know much about cooking. My mother was a woman of many wonderful qualities, but she wasn’t really a cook. Most of what I know I learned from watching the amazing Julia Child. “The French Chef” was one of those iconic shows of the 70’s that made an indelible impression on everyone who watched. She took you step by step though the process of whatever she was making, explaining so simply how to do it, what it should look like and, most importantly for me, how to fix it if it went wrong. From Julia I learned how to make a roux and turn it into a fabulous sauce, how to tell if a fish is fresh and how to boil eggs.
I still do it the way Julia said, first punching a tiny hole in the large end to release the air bubble which is what pushes the egg out into the water if it cracks and then boiling for 12 minutes, no more, no less. That is, until senility took over. It’s not even that I was doing anything important, just the usual afternoon stuff. Toward the end, I did smell the scent of something odd cooking. But I live next to a restaurant, I’m sort of used to that.
And then it happened – boom! What was that? Are kids playing with fireworks? BOOM! Is that Hizbullah in the parking lot? I looked toward the window to see what was going on – and then I saw it. The EGGS! They were exploding there on the stove. I got them to the sink as quickly as I could, hoping to save the pan if nothing else, the water hissing and crackling as it hit. Peering through the steam, I saw that the pan could be cleaned and so no real damage was done. But I was dumbstruck by my own dementia. And this surprised even me – exploded eggs are still edible.
