Les Oeufs et les Pommes Frites

While I was incapacitated with my gammy neck and shoulder, Mick had to make dinner for a few nights. Now his culinary skills may be a little limited, but he can always be counted upon to rustle up a mean egg and chips. What would we do without this Great British standby?

For the uninitiated, British chips are not French fries, those slivers of deep fried potato by-product served up by all the burger joints, but slices of deep-fried real potatoes. In the good old days, these would have been deep-fried in lard or beef dripping, but nowadays, in our quest for healthier food (I use the term loosely in this case), they are deep-fried in veggie oil.

The eggs are also fried in a little veggie oil, we like ours over-medium, so the yokes are still runny, but cooked. Great for dunking your chip butties in.

For yer chip butty, you need two pieces of sliced bread, here we use wheat, but in England it would have to be thick sliced Warburtons white bread, heavily slathered in butter so that when you pack your chips in and eat it, the butter runs down your arm. I already mentioned that I am making no health claims for this dish.

You also need a dollop of HP brown sauce on the side of your plate, but if you can’t get that, A1 Bold and Spicy steak sauce will do (we don’t want any wishy-washy tomato ketchup here, thank you!). You also need to dose your chips heavily with salt and malt vinegar, chips are the only thing I ever use salt on, but I’ll talk about that some other time.



La pièce de resistance the Chip butty

Egg and Chips

Serves 2
Ingredients:

Chips

3 large russets
Sufficient vegetable oil for deep frying

Eggs

4 free-range or organic eggs.
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Directions:

Pre-heat deep-fat fryer to 400°F

While oil heats, peel, wash, dry, and chip potatoes.

Add potatoes to fryer, when they start to brown, remove fryer basket of chips and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Doing this ensures a crispy outside and soft inside chip.

While chips rest, in a skillet heat oil for eggs.

Put chips back in oil until browned.

Fry eggs to desired doneness

Serve immediately with condiments and bread as noted above. Yum!