Food Network: Boiled Egg and Toast

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Boiled Egg and Toast
Recipe courtesy Nigella Lawson

Ingredients
1 egg
Toast
Salt

Special equipment: 1 matchstick

Instructions
And no, I'm not going to give a recipe for a boiled
egg, but I do feel it's worth reminding you that if the egg is fridge-cold it
should go into the pan along with the cold water when you put it on the stove, but
if it's at room temperature - which is better - you should lower it into the water

once it's started boiling. How long you want to cook it for is obviously up to
you, but a beautiful, oozingly golden yolked egg had 4 minutes, as indeed mine
does every morning. I also throw in a matchstick - rather than the teaspoon of
vinegar or salt that some people swear by - but just because my great aunt always
did and told me that it stopped the white cloudy substance flowing out should the
egg crack while cooking. I think it does work, but I do it because I've always
done it, not because I have scientific proof that it's effective.

And that's the thing about breakfast: there is a strong ritualistic element; that,
too, brings it in line with feasting in general. I have the same breakfast every
day. Early mornings are bad enough without having the spectre of choice to haunt
you too. First thing in the morning, I'd rather make breakfast than a decision and
so I only ever swerve from this out of whim or, occasionally, dietary
restraint.

And like everyone with a weak need to be bound by habitual behaviour, I am
irritatingly fussy. I want my egg to be Italian (free-range, organic and imported
from Bologna, if you please: but seeing it, you understand why Italians refer to
the yolks as 'I rossi' - 'the reds' of the egg). I want my salt to be Maldon and I
want my sourdough bread to come from the Poilane bakery down the road. As ever,
the butter has to be pale and unsalted and not fridge-cold, but not all
sloppy-soft and oily either. I don't mind having a different breakfast, but I
don't want a lesser version of the same one. Maybe it's my age.

I know it is the convention to offer various savoury delights for the breakfast
table but in all honesty I can't oblige. My feeling is simply this: apart from the
iconic ideal of the boiled egg and soldiers, what could be better than fried eggs
and bacon, poached eggs on toast, scrambled egg with sausages? Yes, as Lord

Lambton memorably said when found with 2 hookers, 1 black, 1 white, we all want
variety, but I don't see fiddling about with the basic components of a traditional
breakfast to make strange and wonderful cheesey-bacony-eggy-bready concoctions
ultimately that satisfying.