No milk

Perfect scrambled eggs

It's enough to send a bloke apoplectic. Every online recipe for scrambled eggs is followed by a stream of comments:

“You forgot the milk...”

“I beat the eggs and the milk...”

“Take three eggs and half a cup of milk...”

Like the perfect omelette, perfect scrambled eggs need no milk. Ziltch moloko. Quantity of milk = 0. That's zero millilitres, fluid ounces, gallons, metric pints, whatever. Adding sloppy liquid of any sort to the eggs does not make things lighter or fluffier or in any way better, it just makes the mix more sloppy. Good results depend on taking care and getting the timings right.

Simple.

Beat the required number of eggs. This depends on the number of people requiring the eggs, and how fat and or hungry those people are. Don't overdo it, just mess them up a bit. Frighteners, no broken limbs or visible bruises, OK Vern?

Add. This is all you need to add: salt and pepper to taste. This may have to be a compromise. BLISS' idea of salt to taste is to lob in the EU salt mountain, so she may have to add a bit more when it's on the plate.

Add (optional) a small dollop of crème fraiche.

Heat some butter and olive oil (to stop the butter burning and going bitter) gently. I didn't say “in a pan” because that's obvious and we're not in the litigation zone here. Bung in the eggs and stir gently. Leave until they start setting at the bottom and sides of the pan, then work at pulling the set bits away with a wooden spoon. Before they're anything like set, turn off the heat and keep moving around (the eggs, not you) gently while the toast gets toasted and buttered. Serve with the buttered toast.


Semi-skimmed

How this hasn't been adopted as a euphemism for neither here nor there escapes me. Topping the milk cliché charts are:

“Skimmed? That's just chalky water, innit?”

And:

“You might as well not have milk”

Well, yes, you might. I can tell a cup of coffee with skimmed milk from one with no milk at all. The one without is mine.

There's a place for full cream milk. With it, you can make home made paneer or yoghurt.

Skimmed offers the milk without the fat.

Semi-skimmed is, like, lower in fat without actually going the whole hog, it's the no-man's-land of fence-sitting, milky indecisiveness. It's the number one best selling variety the same way that chicken tikka masala tops the curry house charts: “Nothing too hot for me, Ethel, I'm not used to this foreign stuff”; bland middle of the road tops the music and television charts, and the way the mail is the best selling paper.