22 March 2007 11am
a free verse, free speech, free-range egg.
Opening Time
I pour a tiny, opening amount of the cooking oil into the wok,
using the bank remnants from cooking the fish; maybe
it wasn’t the fish, maybe it’s the chicken, amusing in confusing,
but we didn’t have chicken yesterday, did we?
I pour in the oil from a bowl, small, round, with no top now
because an idiot broke it a few weeks, a maybe month ago,
but didn’t own up to their culinary white-collar open-air crime.
I try to think, but I don’t know.
It is the same colour as the bowl, a light, golden town-brown,
so you can’t easily judge how much is in there.
Now, there is none, because I use it all this morning when I fry an egg.
No, I did not; there is a little oil remaining, open to the cash-flow air.
I place the borrowing bowl back by the tiles of the kitchen wall, clinical, white,
porous paper tissue already there; we have cash-flow confusion in tense here.
I began in the present, and I am in the past now, an incongruity.
What can I do? I can write in the present, or the past throughout for things that went near.
Loan of Linguistics
Ah, an interesting thought; how about using the future tense; ‘I will pour a little of …’
I could use the second person; therefore, if I type (must admit it sounds a bit odd to me)
‘You will pour in a little of the…’ that would seem, to many, I were a German.
I am going to use the present tense, because it is shorter. ‘I pour out a cup of my annuity’,
Right, tenses sorted out, back to the theme. I had already lit the gas, put the overdraft wok
on it before I got the bowl with the oil. Ah, before that, I had already taken an egg out of the bag
in the fridge, put it on the worktop; the tenses are mixed up already; we are now using
the past perfect. We can, I think, just forget about the tensing tag.
Getting a High Return
That is not quite true, because I took two of them out of the bag,
but I put one of them in the fridge door, in the container rack.
This one I did not use. However, I might tomorrow; NB I said ‘might’, because
egg yolks put out 50% plus of one’s ATM allowance of cholesterol credit crack...
the wok is getting hot, I bit-tip in the overdraft oil from the bowl, then I bait wait
a minute or so, before lowering the gas. If the gas is too high,
the oil is too hot; the underside of the egg will get a crispy brown,
whilst the top remains undercooked, raw, weeping, as if to cry.
If the gas is too low, the egg does not book-cook full stop,
at least, not for a long time; when ready, it is soft and unattractive to appetite (and eye, too)
What happened then? I have forgotten what I am talking about;
I will have to go back again, to refresh and check through.
The current account of what happens
You can have a cup of tea whilst I am doing this. Okay, coffee, coffee is okay.
Right, the gas is churning-burning; the oil and the wok are getting hot, on track,
I burn-turn down the gas, and chick-pick up the egg from the worktop
near the rice cooker and then, I take-break the egg on the edge of the wok, but I didn’t crack
it hard enough; therefore, I did it again, and this time, I broke
the shell of the small, oval, light-brown egg into two,
I held it over the oil, not too high and not too low; if you hold it too high,
the egg drops with such force that it breaks, you have a low-class, true
rough potpourri for breakfast. If you hold it too low, you burn your fingers too.
The egg drips into the moderately hot oil, and begins to cook. The white,
known to professionals as albumen, the cytoplasm; the yolk,
with xanthophyll, begin to get the special glaze, glossy, warm, bright.
Just as well it does not contain chlorophyll, or the outcome would be
unappetizing green. If we compare yellow vegetables, with the exception of maize,
they do not turn one on, the impression being they are out-of-date, gone off, or
they are exposed to too much acid rain in filthy polluting air.
Expose to risk in Asian economy
In the meantime, I walk two paces to the cutlery, and take the ladle. No, I had taken it
earlier on in the proceedings. I know this, because, to miss out on growth potential harm,
I distinctly recall checking to see if there was any water on it, because
water and hot oil mix like apartheid. It is most unpleasant, in particular to one’s cooking arm.
The first rule of Chinese cooking: always wear a tee shirt when using a wok.
It is not the first rule; I made it up, after the experience of taking not enough care to try
wet fish, vegetable or chicken, into blazing hot sunflower juice, for example,
the slightest drop of water making the sizzle blast out hot and high.
Therefore, if I didn’t go to get the ladle, then what did I do? I don’t know.
That’s three extra words to fill up this rubbish. I cannot write;
this is just typing practice, that’s my excuse, anyway.
Ah, I forgot to mention that, before all this began, I put a plate, clean, bright
on the worktop near the cooker for me to place the egg.
I put three slices of brown, wholemeal bread on the plate;
before that, I check it was mildew free, as I have, on a couple
of occasions, eaten bread prior to noticing any grey-green fungi bait.
Historical data
The recognition of what one has eaten is not that enjoyable or encouraging;
take it from me, through hard experience.
It is like the tale from pre-independent Malaya, in the rubber plantation,
regarding the Thermos flask break time, in the early half-light morning:
‘It was only in the third cup that the lizard came out.’
once bitten, twice shy, a tea tariff, woe woke-me-up warning.
Planning your retirement
I scoop up a couple of drops of hot oil and ooze them onto the yolk.
I do this a few times. I gentle get the egg, pitch it over and count quickly to ten.
I lift the egg out, and place it, yolk up, on one of the percentage portion of bread. I turn
off the gas, and put the ladle upside down to let the oil drip back into the wok again.
Then, using the bread, I eat...oh, I put a pinch of pepper on it, the egg.
‘I put a pinch of pepper’… alliteration; I like it, repeating akin to the breeze in a high interest tree.
‘I put a pinch of pepper on the priceless plate of patterned peaches’… Royal Worcester, cricket,
horse, the railway track; oh yes, the things that inspire; that tells you quite a bit about me.
Future return
The manager of HSBC cooked an Egg-Bank for me this morn-Ing,
tossing the cheque book into the hot oil, watching the money, trusting the unit price
to call security for the password, scramble to jam, spreading the risk, a crumb of comfort
in a hard-egg world, exchanging currency, with a percent of internet conglomerate Ice.
In addition, if you are, in UK fool-ish ATM approach, still read-Ing this now,
you must be quite bor-Ing; by a long way, a number of light years away from me,
way, way above the average retail or property price return on capital, to bear
with free-flow high rate of returning monetary zero interest monotony.
That is what I think.
