Poached Eggs

Sometimes I have my most lucid moments in the middle of the night.  Last night, I had one of them.  I stayed up WAY past my bed time (with a 2yr old and a 5 month old, every night is a school night!) trawling the web looking for silicone moulds to use in the Varoma, and reading far too many blogs.  At 1.30am I decided enough was enough and I toddled off to bed.  As I was drifting off to sleep, I decided I wanted to make poached eggs in the thermomix.  I contemplated many possible ways of achieving this.  Suddenly I had a serious light bulb moment.  What if I made the little glad wrap sacks that I've used before in a pot of simmering water on the stove, but suspended them from the lid of the Varoma?  Would there be enough room?  How would I suspend them?

The intensity with which I wanted to resolve this was such that at 2am I actually got out of bed and got my Varoma out to ponder a little more.  The answer lies with kitchen twine my friends...

I wound it through the vents in the Varoma lid to create a figure 8.  This leaves PLENTY of room to hand little sacks of eggy goodness inside the Varoma.  And yes folks, I did this (above) at 2am.  I then placed the lid in the fridge to wait for morning before finding out if the cooking method would work.

So, 500g water in the bowl, Varoma temp for 9 minutes (same as for soft boiled eggs).

 Perfect!

Before cooking the eggs though, I'd attempted hollandaise.  My first attempt ever.  It failed terribly, but I did have a pre-packaged packet of the stuff in the cupboard as a back up - breakfast was saved!

Poached eggs served with leftover Christmas ham, Five Seed Bread (EDC), cherry tomatoes, hollandaise and basil...divine...

As for the method of poaching the eggs, for 2 to 4 eggs I wouldn't bother with suspending them in the Varoma lid.  Just sitting the little sacks inside the basket works just as well.  Where this method would absolutely come into it's own is if (for some mad reason) you decided to serve poached eggs to 6 people all at once (Christmas breakfast comes to mind).  I think you could successfully suspend 10-12 eggs across the length of the twine without them being pressed right up against each other and therefore steaming successfully.  Let me know if you try it!

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