Keep Your Chocolate Eclair Away From My Eggs
This week's Corrie revealed the rather alarming fact that I have something in common with Roy Cropper. No, I don't carry an old shopping bag nor am I married to a transgender person. But we use the same method of cooking poached eggs.I call this the 'whirlpool method', which sounds like some arcane form of Catholic contraception.
Roy calls it the 'vortex method'. He has been demonstrating his culinary skills to an award-winning chef. Vera was very puzzled. When he offered to show the man his vortex she thought he had some kind of alien in the kitchen.
Some people add vinegar to the water to make the egg whites congeal. Even some top chefs do this. They should be horsewhipped. And I don't say that just because I'm allergic to vinegar.
With the whirlpool/vortex method, you bring the water to the boil, remove it from the heat, then rotate a spoon very rapidly in the water to create a vortex. Before it loses momentum, quickly drop the egg into the centre of the vortex. The white of the egg will then curl itself around the yolk.
Return the pan to the heat and bring back to boiling temperature, then reduce the heat or remove the pan from the hob and allow the egg to simmer for two to three minutes, according to taste and dependent on your resistance to salmonella.
Perfection guaranteed. Almost. To paraphrase the curate: 'All of this egg is excellent'.
I follow my usual practice of crediting the writer: Debbie Oates. I assume it is she who uses the vortex method and what a shining example of womanhood she must be.
Meanwhile, we discovered that corner shop owner Dev has been spreading his DNA around with Stakhanovite dedication and has now produced enough offspring to cast another spin-off soap on a children's channel.
These revelations led Dame Nancy Banks-Smith in The Guardian to make a joke that must have shocked her many admirers.
Like me, she has been puzzling for 45 years over Ena Sharples' aversion to chocolate eclairs. I think it was the very first episode when Ena walked into the corner shop and said "Half a dozen fancies and NO ECLAIRS."
Now, in the light of Asian Dev's heroic performance as a peripatetic sperm bank for the women of Weatherfield, Nancy says she knows why Ena Sharples kept chocolate eclairs at arm's length.
Try as I will, I cannot think of an innocent meaning to Nancy's little joke.
Ooh, Nancy, you are awful! But we love you.
posted by Willie Lupin @ 9:35 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Ah, the Divine Nancy (praise be unto Her)! I'm sure you're right about the joke; she has a way of dropping absolutely filthy innuendo into her perfect prose. Did you know, that despite a northern upbringing, NB-S has an absolutely cut glass RP accent? She was forced into elocution lessons by her mother, a pub landlady, to help her rise above the trilby-hatted denizens of the saloon bar.
- Tony -
I was not paying attention and so I did wonder what Vera was on about. What does bemuse me is Roy's bag. Why?
Tony: yes, I heard her on the radio a long time ago.
I read it three times in case it was me reading something obscene into it. So that's a relief. Of course, she grew up with music hall and Max Miller, not to metion growing up in a northern pub.
May she live forever.
Mr Zaphod: the bag is to Roy what a mobile phone or iPod is to other people today.
And do pay attention in future!
It's often said that Max Miller was banned from the BBC for telling the following joke:
"I was walking along a narrow cliff path the other day. A beautiful young lady was walking towards me. There wasn't enough room on the path for the both of us. I didn't know whether to block her passage or toss myself off."
Untrue, unfortunately. Much too crude for the "cheeky" Mr Miller.
- Tony -
Getting back to Roy's bag for a moment...
Apparently, the bag belonged to David Neilson's mum who died just before he joined the Corrie cast.
Tony, I heard Paul merton recycle that joke recently and credit it to Max Miller. I'm sure he didn't say it on the BBC but having looked at some of his other gags in John Fisher's book on comedians, there are plenty that are equally crude. Of course, one of his techniques was to omit the last line or word, as in the rhyme 'When roses are red they're ready for plucking, When girls are sixteen they're....' and let his audience supply the ending. Although Miller is widely revered now, I can't help thinking he was a forerunner of the despised Bernard Manning and that his crudity wasn't always redeemed by wit.
mj: I'd forgotten that. Thanks for reminding me. I always think that Roy is as much David Neilson's creation as the scriptwriters'.
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