Well I had a blog-worthy dinner planned for last night - poached eggs over baked polenta with romaine and parmesan cheese and a side salad. The polenta came together nicely, I smoothed it onto a greased pan to cool, and when it was nearly cool, brought some water to a boil, assembled the salad, and turned on the broiler to prepare for the pan of polenta.
Sometime soon after, my luck turned. I had read several articles about poaching eggs in plastic wrap, which seemed like a great idea, because it's much less mess and I don't own a slotted spoon. So I lined a mug with plastic wrap, cracked an egg into it, and tied it into a little parcel. Rinse and repeat 3 more times. The parcels go into the barely boiling water for 3 minutes. MORE THAN ONE of the places I had read about poaching eggs in plastic wrap had listed the cook times as: 2 minutes for runny yolks, 3 minutes for medium set yolk, 4 minutes for firmly set yolk. In reality (I know, I know) I like my yolks pretty runny, but S (and I know my mother would approve) eyes with suspicion anything undercooked, especially eggs (but even cookie dough!), so I settled on 3 minutes, medium-set yolks.
Meanwhile, I brushed the top of the set polenta with some olive oil and set it under the broiler.
After 3 minutes I removed the eggy packets like giant teabags from the boiling water and placed them on the plates with the salads. All I could see through the plastic wrap was the opaque egg whites. Out of the oven comes the pan of polenta, and I cut it into pieces. The plan was to spatula the pieces of polenta onto the plates, open the plastic-wrap teabags, and dump the eggs onto their polenta beds.
Well. I could tell when I spatulaed the polenta onto the plates that things weren't going as planned. Set polenta is supposed to be firm and relatively dense. (I don't know if you've ever left grits out too long, but that's pretty much it) Set, baked polenta is NOT supposed to be floppy and rubbery and fluffy, much like a light omelet or egg casserole. Not one to be deterred by unexpected flopubberfliness, I slapped those bad boys on the plates and moved on to the eggs. I opened the mouths of the plastic-wrap packets upside-down over the tops of the polenta slices, hoping the poached eggs would deposit themselves nicely onto their cornmealy resting places and we could begin eating. What actually happened was this: all of the cooked white of the first egg remained adhered to the plastic wrap, and its completely unset yolk, along with some clear, snotty, unset white, plopped onto the polenta, broke open, and oozed all over the plate, salad included.
With one dinner down the drain, I turned my attentions to carefully prying open the other 3 egg packets and planning the devastating secret moves I would use against S in our battle over the single remaining plate of food. All 3 had the same problem as the first: cooked white firmly glued to plastic covering, and centers so undercooked even I wouldn't eat them. In defeat, I seized another dish, covered it with what was supposed to be the leftover salad and polenta, and sprinkled both dishes with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (peanut butter and jelly may also have been involved).
I didn't take pictures. They would have been awful anyway. I guess the moral of the story is either don't poach eggs without a slotted spoon, or grease your plastic wrap and boil the HELL out of them. The polenta's still a mystery to me. Who knows what was up with that.
