The Fried Egg Sandwich
Ingredients
- Two eggs
- Ample butter
- Two slices of white bread
Method
Take a couple of good eggs, gently beat them into themselves, season and pour them into a hot buttered pan. Use a small pan so there's some depth there. Scramble the eggs lightly first, then let them sit on a low heat, gently cooking through to a point where the top is still soft and custardy. Then fold the mixture over once and slip it out between two slices of plain, white, thickly buttered bread.
Let the sandwich rest before eating and the layers of folded egg will retain both runniness and heat. That heat will melt the butter, creating a kind of lubricant dressing.
Egg Mayonnaise Sandwich
Ingredients
- Four eggs
- 250ml rapeseed oil
- 5g Dijon mustard
- 40g anchovies
- 100g butter
- 2 slices white sourdough
- 1 punnet cress
Method
Put three eggs in a pan of cold water, bring it up to a rolling boil then drop it back to a six-minute simmer. Run the eggs under cold water to stop them cooking and peel them as soon as you can do so without discomfort.
You just have to put the last egg, a spoonful of Dijon and 250ml of rapeseed oil into a cocktail shaker, jam a stick blender into the bottom, start it up and slowly withdraw. If it would take you more than 30 seconds to do this, use Heinz. Not Hellmann’s. Mash half a jar of anchovies into 100g of softened butter and slather this on two slices of thick-cut white sourdough.
Once the eggs have reduced to just warm, break them up into large rough chunks in a bowl, with a fat spoonful of the mayo. Stir casually, then load on to the bread and trim the contents of a punnet of cress over the top.
The NYC Bacon, Egg & Cheese
Ingredients
- Three rashers smoked streaky bacon
- Two eggs
- A soft bread roll (Kaiser if available)
- A slice of American "cheese"
- 50g grated gruyère Ketchup (optional)
Preparation
You'll need your largest frying pan, not because there is a vast amount of egg to deal with but because we’re attempting to replicate the flat-top grill of a diner or bodega.
Cut three rashers of smoked bacon in half crosswise and fry on medium heat, under a weight if you have it. Don’t worry if you don’t. It’s purely a matter of aesthetics.
Just go for "crisp". Remove the bacon and, in any remaining grease, grill the cut faces of a roll. Pour two loosely beaten eggs into the hot pan and give them the most cursory scramble as they spread out. Then lay in the centre a single slice of "American burger cheese-product" and a handful of grated gruyère. No cheese is as runny as the American stuff in a hot sandwich.
Put the bacon on top of the cheese, then fold the edges of the fried egg up, in and over, to enclose the whole shebang in a neat package, which you can, if you’re feeling rugged, flip before lifting on to the roll. You may smear the roll with ketchup if you so desire.
Wrap everything in some greaseproof paper and leave it for about three minutes.