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The biggest breakfast... if you can crack it
Nick Curtis and Anna Davis, Evening Standard02.05.08
It might seem odd, in the middle of a credit crunch, to spend £15.99 on a single egg.
But these are very big eggs. The biggest eggs laid by any bird, in fact. They weigh an eye-watering 3lb and are 24 times bigger than those squeezed out by the average chicken.
Laid by free-range birds at Brian Tomlin's Lincolnshire farm, these Clarence Court Ostrich eggs are for sale to creative London cooks in 19 branches of Waitrose, including John Lewis's Food Hall. The question is, what to do with them?
"They work very well as omelettes," said a Waitrose spokeswoman. "Quite big ones."
Described as having a distinctive, light flavour, the eggs would also probably be handy if one were making a giant frittata, or a massive meringue. They take two hours to hard-boil, though, so they are probably not the best egg to go to work on.
However, Londoners are nothing if not inventive and curious about new foodstuffs. And since ostriches lay an egg only every two to three days, it seems only fair to treat the fruit of their labours with respect. Chef Oliver Rowe, of the restaurant Konstam in King's Cross, suggests boiling and slicing the egg and serving it with a sauce of pine nuts and tarragon. Tristan Welch, who created the Princess Diana soufflé at Launceston Place in Kensington, suggested scrambling then smoking it and serving it with smoked salmon, while an online search throws up a rather alarming recipe for Ostrich Scotch Egg.
The Evening Standard presented Rowley Leigh of Le Café Anglais in Porchester Gardens with a 3lb egg and asked him what he would do with it. He decided on a huge dish of scrambled egg. The hardest thing was getting into it. The shell is too hard to simply crack, so Mr Leigh hammered a roasting spike into the top and bottom and blew the contents out into a bowl. For good measure he scored the top of the egg with a knife and cut it off with scissors to drain out the last drops.
"We are not talking about the realms of practicalities here, we are talking about fun," he said. "It tastes very much like a normal egg. It would go nicely with caviar - but so would everything. It tastes very creamy and rich but I wouldn't want to eat a lot of it."
He said he would not add it to his menu as it is a "novelty item", adding: "Most people don't order food out of novelty. They want to know what they are eating. I don't see the point actually. Apart from anything else it is a very large quantity of food and it is not very practical for families."
However, the egg drew lots of attention from restaurant staff eager to give it a try.
