A Eulogy for Curried Eggs

So seeing that I had decided to swan off, abandoning all things Edmonds, there was work to do. In order to finish this thing within a year I am required to average 10 recipes a week. Now I know there have been weeks where I have done less than 10 and last week and the week before that, well I didn’t do any. So now I need to get cooking.

Thursday night I got in the door and started Edmondsing. Looking through for something I could pass off as dinner to the poor husband I stumbled across the eggs section – curried eggs and stuffed eggs to be precise. We had some eggs that were purchased preholiday so it was a necessary exercise anyway to use them up.

I’m a bit iffy on eggs sometimes. I have grown more adventurous over the years but I used to be a strictly hardboiled, never poached, never fried kind of girl. Every now and then I venture into scrambled, but I always need to do them myself – always light and fluffy, never creamy. I definitely wouldn’t stray into egg sandwich territory. Not ever.

So boiling eggs and then covering them in curry powder spiked white sauce with onions in seems a bit odd to me. The Edmonds is entirely too white sauce happy at the best of times. White sauce just isn’t that good.

The more I think about it, is it possible that curried eggs is the quintessential Edmonds dish? It definitely has the aire of days gone by without the tradition of say a steamed pudding or lambs fry and bacon. There is something about curried eggs that says 1966 to me, 1966 the way I imagine it anyway.

I’d have to say if this is the sort of thing I was expecting to find as a great triumphal hero of our past to be dragged into the culinary spotlight today then the project might have missed the mark a little! Curried eggs were not the food highlight of the week, not even of the day, I think the can of chicken and corn soup I had for lunch was more satisfying and enjoyable.

I guess though it’s the kind of food that brings back a certain nostalgia – the sort of thing that Mum often made for lunch on a Sunday, and it takes you straight back to the red formica table, the cream patterned vinyl and the orange curtains. But for someone free of this particular nostalgia – I’m a child of the 80’s so it was cream vinyl wallpaper and pink carpet in my day – curried eggs is pretty average.

Fortunately the husband is understanding of the esoteric dinner choices because I served the curried eggs with stuffed eggs. Hard boiled, cut in half with the yolk pulled out and mixed with yet more curry powder before being mushed back in. I have seen these before but never tried them due to my aversion to other peoples eggs. I don’t know that I’d bother in future either – perhaps I’m just not intended to love eggs and curry powder?

There were still another couple of eggs to finish off and I was trying to get as many recipes under my belt as possible. I found snow pudding – as the husband put it – another one of those bloody overbeaten airy desserts. I can’t blame him – it did taste of nothing. I took a couple of mouthfuls and then fed the rest to the sink. I tried to save it by making spiced orange sauce – not a white sauce this time but water and orange juice, sugar and cinnamon thickened with cornflour. It was a nice idea but not quite enough orange juice and possibly too much sugar and water. The whole dish was bland on bland unfortunately.
So that’s 6 down this week so far, I’m hoping I can get 20 out of the way this week to avoid spreading the pain too much. If I’m going to find the time to cook I’m going to have to cut down on my egg related prose.