For reasons that are too complex and disheartening to enter into, I write this from the desk-like ledge in room 003 of something called a 'Holiday Inn Express'. I'm not sure I have the words to encompass the dejection.
I am trapped in a retail park somewhere on the crusting rim of a Midlands industrial town of such abiding awfulness that my lips can't form its name. It's a yellow brick Lubianka with 200 cubicles designed to be hosed out when the travelling reps have soiled the sheets to the exceptional variety of porn channels. Local dining options include a large, industrial theme-pub to one side and a drive-through McDonalds to the other. Last night, in the pub, I ordered a rare steak that took two hours to arrive. It managed to be both cold and overcooked - a difficult combination to achieve. I estimated an hour on the grill, forty-five minutes to incubate under a heat lamp and a quarter of an hour to congeal.
A booking cockup meant that the room I'd requested was gone and by the time I arrived here even my simple desire for a non-smoking room was met with snorts of derision.
So last night, I lay between the sheets (though I'd have felt better in a sleeping bag on top of the greasy manmade fibre bedspread) and consoled myself with dreams of scrambled eggs.
When I have to spend time on the road and at the mercy of cack catering, the scrambled egg dream often returns. I spent a summer, as a child, with my Grandmother who fed me, every morning, with a huge mound of golden, buttery scrambled eggs on thick, white, toasted bloomer. Perhaps the summer was particularly idyllic, perhaps the rest of my life was less than happy at the time, but something about those eggs became lodged in my mind's palate as the very peak of comforting, coddling luxury. I still cling to it in times of dire privation.
One thing was certain from the very beginning. I was of the soft tendency (For civilians, the soft/hard controversy is the only level of debate - for congescenti, it is just the beginning). Most civilised cultures follow the French logic that eggs should be scrambled into soft, custardy curds, in a saucepan over a low heat - possibly with the discreet addition of a little cream. Imagine, then, my consternation when, on my first and much anticipated visit to an authentic diner in the United States, I was served eggs 'scrambled' hard, in a frying pan with onions and peppers.
Having lived both in the Deep South and in San Francisco, I yield to no man in my admiration for American cookery. From Prudhomme to Puck, from a lamplit, backroad barbecue pit in the mountains of Tennessee to Nobu Matsuhisa's original West Hollywood shrine, I've indulged myself and loved every mouthful, but this was nothing short of an abomination.
So I knew soft and in saucepans was the way to go and narrowed my search. Then, through serendipity and, oddly enough, a hotel booking cockup, I neared the grail.
I was working for an Australian TV company with a boss whose animal stupidity was exceeded only by his stratospheric arrogance. He had travelled to Paris for a crucial meeting and, doubtless distracted by a drugged, underaged Ukranian whore, had lost the vital videotape. I forget what piece of half-baked faeces we were attempting to foist on the French at the time but I was commanded to make a copy of the tape in London and to fly immediately to Paris. No expense was to be spared to bring the necessary materials to the great man and to a poor bloody footsoldier who was, at the time, living in a Peckham squat, nothing could have been more welcome.
The oaf's PA was a clever and accomodating woman and so it was quickly arranged that, by the time I had thrust the reel of shame into his hands at three in the morning, the only room available to me would be one floor up from his suite at the Hotel George V.
Still, it doesn't do to be too fussy. As William Blake has it, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom". Room service provided an exceptionally fine foie gras on toasted brioche with sauterne jelly and a half bottle of Billecart Salmon Brut - well it was the early hours of the morning so I didn't want to exploit the situation.
The crucial meeting was at breakfast the following day. I calculated that, if I avoided the dining room and ordered my eggs from room service, I would be entirely and blissfully undisturbed. I slept the sleep of the righteous and, at seven, woke to place my order.
It has been said that a truly well trained servant would, on encountering his master naked, not notice and that the master, caring not a whit for the consideration of his servant, would also remain indifferent - An assertion which was put sorely to the test when the waiter cruised in on me fresh from the shower wearing nothing a towel on my head. He didn't bat an eyelid and handed me a pair of slippers. Regretfully, my own sang was not so froid and I dived into the marbled bathroom while he laid out my freshly squeezed orange juice, indescribably lovely café au lait, ironed copy of the IHT (one can't have everything) and - be still my pulsing salivary glands - a white porcelain cocotte of scrambled eggs.
Composure regained, I sat, poured the coffee and lifted the lid. The eggs were saffron yellow, perfectly soft and surmounted by two tiny sausages in a V shape (in honour, I assume, of George V). As I ate, hushed and awed, it became apparent that the fiendish French Master Chef had removed most of the egg whites and replaced them with rich cream. Perhaps it's part of a long slow revenge for Agincourt that French cooks try to kill us all in slow degrees through congestive heart failure but, at that moment, I was so transported I forgave them Vichy, William of Normandy and possibly even Johnnie Halliday.
For years that was my best try. I've since suffered endless gallons of hotel eggs floating in liquid slicks over Sterno tins, rubbery yellow pucks 'enlivened' with insulting strips of fluorescent smoked salmon and even had one or two pleasant suprises - some of the small country house hotels still care enough to try. I've perfected my own particular routine over countless Sunday mornings and can turn out some real beauties with reasonable consistency. But, through it all, in spite of four years living in the US and ten years with an American wife, I never, ever, dishonoured my free-range beauties in frying pan, poele or skillet.
Then I heard about Bill's.
Bill's is a restaurant in Sydney, a city that has both relaxed natives and spectacular weather, engendering an almost religious respect for breakfast. Over the years, several foodies who's opinions I respect had mentioned Bill's and the legend of his eggs.
According to the legend, a journalist from the London Times (the chap had clearly gone native) reported that Bill's were the best scrambled eggs he had ever tasted. Moved by what he interpreted as rash overstatement by a colleague and perhaps a certain national shame at America's efforts in the area, a hack from the New York Times travelled to Sydney and, to his surprise and shame, was forced to agree - publicly in his own paper.
Of course, I immediately charged my agent on the ground - my brother Matt, a fully integrated, adopted Sydneysider - with a reconnaissance mission and was amazed to hear his confirmation. So last year, at the height of Australian summer, some poor client's expense account afforded me the opportunity to try Bill's eggs myself.
The restaurant has one large scrubbed wooden table in a brightly lit room. It's in a converted Victorian house in the fashionably chichi neighbourhood of Darlington. Beautifully understated, it features a huge blackboard menu, a queue of pleasantly fashionable young diners out the door and round the block and an attentive staff of bewitching pierced girls with incongrously clean dreadlocks and immaculate queens. Once the Australian sun, dappling through the bougainvillea, is factored into the equation, one could see how a lesser man's judgement might be dangerously swayed.
Pleasantly charmed but by no means less rigorous in my quest I ordered the eggs. They arrived on crisply toasted sourdough with a large latte (Australians really 'get' coffee) and a refreshing lack of unnecessary garnish. I paused and ate.
They were, without the faintest doubt, the eggs I had dreamed. Neural connections between my tongue and my latent memory fired up like power lines in a hurricane. It was all I could do not to weep. The texture was perfect. They held their shape. As I crushed each curd into the roof of my mouth the scent of the butter rose through the back of my nose without overpowering richness and the creamy, viscid custard balmed my throat. I was in Heaven yet, even as I looked, the picture corrupted before me. That the eggs were worryingly pale in colour was not a problem but the curds were so large and formed - surely, slow stirring would have broken these up. Could it be? Was there any possibility that I had flown around the world to eat eggs prepared in a frying pan?
Within seconds I had negotiated my way behind the passbar and was interrogating the chef, panic rising in my voice.
"Sure, Mate. We always do 'em in a pan. You want me to show you?"
What follows is the lesson the chef gave me in possibly the most important rite of a man's life - breakfast. I hand it to you with reverence and pray you'll use it wisely. In the correct hands these eggs can reduce men to spavined admiration and lovers to shockingly lewd acts of gratitude. Listen in awe, as I did that day, and learn.
Bill's Eggs
This is fast and precise work and everything must be prepped beforehand so have juice, a sprig of fresh Bouganvilea and two freshly made Illy café con leches ready on a tray.
Slap in two thick slices of sourdough toast and beat four large, very fresh eggs with two tablespoons of double cream. Season with Maldon salt and a twist of black pepper.
In a thick-bottomed, non-stick frying pan over full heat, melt a slice of unsalted butter in until it just begins to bubble.
If you've timed it right the toast should pop right about now. Butter it immediately then pour the egg mixture into the pan and let it stand for precisely ten seconds. This will form a solidifying layer on the bottom. Scrape and stir the thickened layer of eggs into the centre of the pan then allow to stand, again, for precisely ten seconds.
Taking the pan off the heat, stir the eggs and spoon immediately onto the toast. They should form perfect fluffy loose curds in the kind of long soft waves you only ever see on balmy evenings in Bondi.
If you need to do this for larger numbers it has to be done in batches of two or, for some mysterious and strangely romantic reason, it fails dismally.
My quest of course continues. Though the eggs are perfect, I still need to find a way to have them served by a soft woman with grey hair, a twinkling smile and smelling of violet soap as I sit, in my brushed nylon 'Man From U.N.C.L.E' jammies, at a dented formica table. But that is a longer and altogether more challenging search.