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The Egg Story It was all going to be so easy. Cooking breakfast for our guests - no problem. After all, I was a veteran, a hero of some of the great breakfast campaigns of the past. Hadn't I, amongst other things, single-handedly cooked breakfast for 50 people for a whole week? And no ordinary people either, but dedicated students of American Shape-note hymn singing. Quirky? You should have seen what they wanted for breakfast.
But I digress. Coming to Aspen House, with a maximum of six people in the dining room at any one time, cooking breakfast was going to be easy. At the risk of slipping into Business-speak, I can tell you that market research revealed that 62.3% of those asked in a survey said they would always order a traditional English brekky when staying in a guesthouse. So, much as I would have liked to tempt our guests with cream cheese and spinach pancakes, smoked sausage and buckwheat stir-fry or bacon and cheese cornbread, it seemed that mostly I would be cooking good old English.
Again, no problem. Herefordshire is becoming well known for small suppliers who produce top notch unpolluted, unadulterated bacon and sausages. Top quality stuff. Produce that is sold direct to some of the country's top restaurants. And I was fortunate enough to be living in this new Land of Plenty. So I had my bacon and sausage sorted - all I needed were the eggs.
Eggs? How could I go wrong? This was no urban jungle, this was the country - everyone grows their own. Around every corner is a sign saying 'free range eggs for sale'. Easy! It should be, but here's when life in the country gets a bit Irish: "Yes, we have eggs for sale . . . normally. But just at the moment they're not laying."
I went from farm to farm, but nobody could help me out. Reasons were given ("I had a load this morning, but someone came along and took all eight dozen" or, "I didn't think they were going to sell, so I've just made fourteen cakes - perhaps you'd like to buy a cake?") but no eggs were to be found.
There was no way I was going to a supermarket - do you know how old an egg is by the time it gets to a supermarket shelf? Ask me some time. Old eggs were out as far as I was concerned. An absolute no-no. What does a traditional English breakfast need? A fried egg. And what happens to an egg that is not fresh when you crack it into a frying pan? It spreads - and who wants a huge paper-thin egg white with a yolk marooned in the middle like a distant sun sinking into a pool of milk. Nobody. Well, nobody that's paying good money for the privilege of eating it anyway.
So, steering clear of the supermarkets, I went to the wholefood shop. I bought half a dozen of their free range eggs and took them home to try. They may have been free range, but they were not newly laid. They spread all over the pan like a white oil slick. I tried eggs from the market. Same story. Racing across the pan like the tide coming in over Pendine Sands. It was only the edge of the pan that stopped the relentless rush of albumen.
Finally, the day came when our first customers were in for breakfast. I had another box of eggs that I'd bought in a farm shop. It was fingers crossed that these would be as fresh as the earnest face of the girl that had sold them to me. I cracked the first one into the pan. It spread faster than an uncoiling spring and hit the edges of the pan with a ripple. At this point I lost my cool, and the eggshell, still dripping in my hand, hit the wall of the kitchen with enough velocity to make it stick . . .
It was some days later that Sally and I were on our way to Hereford, driving past the farm just around the corner. Sally pointed out the sign for free range eggs.
"I called there before, and they hadn't got any," I told her.
"But they might have some today," she said.
"Yes well, I'm not stopping," I replied tersely. I was convinced that no decent eggs existed in this part of the world, and my mind was working on how to solve the problem of The Traditional Breakfast Without Eggs.
"But you never know . . ." she said.
I gave her one of my what's-the-point looks. But for the sake of peace, I stopped the car and we went to the door of the house.
"Got any eggs?" I asked.
"Well," said the man I was talking to, "I've sold all the ones I had."
"Oh, right." No change there then.
"But there might be some more that were laid this morning," he added.
Suggesting I 'wait a moment', he went back indoors. I waited on the doorstep, admiring the view of Hoarwithy church just across the fields. Noises within the house indicated the imminent return of the eggman.
"I've managed to find about two dozen," he said, "How many did you want?"
"I'll have the lot!" I said without hesitation.
Abandoning the trip to Hereford and deaf to Sally's protests that 'it could wait until we get back', I headed for home with something approaching what used to be called gay abandon. I dug out a frying pan from the cupboard, melted a knob of butter in it and cracked the egg. It sat there in a plump oval, gradually turning white. Once cooked, I slid it onto a small plate and cut into the yolk . . . Ah bliss! The perfect egg, plump white and a deep yellow yolk - and so tasty!
So, my thanks to Frank and Rachel from Rylestone Farm in Hoarwithy. They saved my sanity that day, and have given you the opportunity to eat some of the best and freshest eggs you will ever taste.
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