My First Cooked Meal

According to Wikipedia, it can be called "egg in a basket, "eggs in the middle", a "hole in the wall", a "spit in the eye", an "egg in a hole", and, inaccurately enough, "egg with a hole in the middle". They are also known as "bullseye eggs" because they appear to have three rings; one ring made by the bread, one by the egg white, and one by the yolk. In North America, this dish is frequently referred to as "Toad in the hole", not to be confused with the British dish of the same name.

Other names include: "one-eyed egyptian", "egyptian eyes", "cowboy eggs", "egg in toast", "eggs in a blanket", "egg in a hat", "egg in a well", "eggs in a frame", "eggs in a nest", "bird (or birdie) in the nest", "bird's nest", "eggy toast", "Eye Openers", "gas house eggs", "gasthaus eggs", "hole in one", "one-eyed jacks", "one-eyed sailor sandwich", "popeye eggs", "rocky mountain eggs", "wes-egg", "Egyptian fish eye", "peekaboo toast", "egg in the window", "eggie' in a basket" and "sunshine toast".

But whatever it's called, it was the first meal I ever cooked for myself. Heaven knows where the rest of the family was. All I know is this: while we still lived uptown at 14 E. Portland, I read in a children's book -- possibly a children's cookbook -- that a nice breakfast could be cooked by making a hole in the middle of a piece of toast and then frying an egg with the hole over the egg. Another way to do it would be to break the egg over the toast in the pan.

I wish this were a funny story about what a catastrophe my attempt to make this meal was. But it wasn't a catastrophe. I got out a pan, lightly oiled it with Wesson Oil, and when the pan had heated a bit, I broke the egg in the pan. Meanwhile, I toasted a slice of bread and when it was done, I cut a hole in it and ate the toast I cut out. I put the toast on a plate and when the white of the egg had covered the yoke with film, I used a pancake turner and lifted the egg out of the pan and put in on top of the toast. I wasn't quite satisfied, so I got out a saucer, put the egg on it, lifted the toast, slid the egg off the saucer onto the plate, and put the toast over the egg so that the yoke smiled though the hole. I had to have been somewhere around six or seven years old.

To this day, I hate high heat on a stovetop. Aside from boiling water, I always cook on a medium or lower heat. To this day, I do not like an egg that has been cooked on high heat and has a leathery brownness. I like slow-cooked eggs and that day, when I made my first egg in a basket, the recipe directions said to cook the egg on a low heat and I did and I've been using low heat ever since. The same idea applies to my teaching. I try to give students time to let their papers cook slow, I try to keep the heat low, hoping that they will write with deliberation and great care, in a way similar to how I cooked my first egg in uptown Kellogg.

Recipe:

Take a piece of bread and toast it. With a knife or a cookie cutter or a jar, cut a hole in it. Take a fry pan, lightly oil it, and slowly fry an egg. The egg in the basket tastes best when the egg is cooked medium so that it has some firmness, but also has some runny yoke. Then decide if you want to place the toast over the egg as it cooks or put the egg on the plate and put the toast over it or if you want to put the toast in the pan, crack the egg in the hole, and let the egg fry in the immediate company of the toast. It's up to you. Just be sure to fry the egg slowly.