What came first, the chicken or the egg?

As many will testify I am an excellent cook – if the food is either served in the dark or to the blind. My mother lovingly calls my cooking ”party food for the blind”. Sometimes it looks better, sometimes it's worse but usually it tastes all right. Michele Roux Jr – that famous chef from Masterchef Professionals – wouldn't be impressed.

Being an avid follower of various cooking shows on telly I decided to finally start cooking according to recipes, back to basic so to speak. Given that I had, in fact, already mastered the art of making tea I went straight to the next step – boiling an egg. Hard boiled eggs no problem. Sure the yoke was nearly green, but hard boiled they were. Soft boiled I failed to manage so I went to the Queen of Cooking, Saint Delia Smith.

Saint Delia is on a mission to teach the world to cook. She has written several excellent cook books but my personal favourite is Delia's Complete How To Cook. It actually starts with teaching you how to boil an egg. 

One morning I decided to treat the Long Suffering Husband to breakfast. Can't remember the date, but it may have been his birthday. We were going to have tea, toast and his favourite – soft boiled eggs.

I selected Delia's Complete How To Cook from the book shelves, a good choice I thought. There were detailed instructions on how to go about this, from what the book said, fairly menial task. I woke my better half up, telling him he was in for a treat and to get up and make himself comfortable on the sofa. I then dressed in my best apron and set about preparing his birthday feast.

Tea making went fine, as the water for the eggs started boiling I set the timer and plonked the toast in the toaster. The breakfast tray looked beautiful. Husband was going to be so happy, and I was proud to play the Domestic Goddess once more. This would be the start of a wonderful, romantic day for us where he was going to be spoiled.

You should have seen the look on my dear Long Suffering Husband's face when I entered the sitting room with the tray. He looked chuffed! However, as soon as he cracked his long wanted for egg open the look on his face quickly turned from chuffed to disgust. 

The Goddess was returned to Daemon with the speed of lightning...

Loose egg white oozed out over the egg cup, revealing a perfectly cooked hard boiled yoke floating around in it. According to all physical laws this ought to be impossible, but the Domestic Daemon had indeed managed it.