Sunday, August 28, 2016

Of quail eggs and Afro-Peruviana...

A quiet summer passes by, and with it come opportunities to broaden the mind. That has meant that it's been a bit quiet here at "Liberal Bureaucracy", but I am intending to return to the blogging, if only because it is a chance to keep people abreast of what I'm up to.

Yesterday, I learned a new skill, peeling hard-boiled quail eggs. we're entertaining today and, as usual, Ros has been busy in the kitchen preparing. There are, however, certain jobs that get referred to me for reasons I don't always understand. Peeling the quail eggs was one of them. Now, I'll be honest, I'm not a huge fan of hard-boiled eggs. The scent of one is enough to put me off, but since Ros asked nicely...

What hadn't been considered, however, was that I don't recall ever peeling an egg. And so, I found myself learning the process from first principles. So, for those of you confronted by such a task in the future without any previous experience, here is what I've learned;
  • having fingernails is a help - you can delicately lever off bits of shell
  • tap the rounded end in order to start the egg - it's easier than if you start at the pointed end
  • quail eggshells are a rather pretty pale blue
  • patience is a virtue - you can rush it, but the end product won't look any where near as good as it might
Peeling twelve quail eggs took quite a long time, but I didn't have anything pressing to do otherwise, and, by applying what I learned, it did get quicker as I went along.

So, what about Afro-Peruviana? Well, having stumbled across a band called Inti Illimani Historico, I was looking for them on YouTube when I discovered that they had made a live album with a singer called Eva Ayllón, of whom I knew nothing. She's really rather good, and I am currently hooked on the album, which was recorded at the Café Torres in Santiago.

As a practising bureaucrat, I had a working assumption that I had no sense of rhythm. Or perhaps, as a middle-class mixed race kid from the Zone 4 suburbs, I just hadn't found mine. I'm beginning to wonder if I haven't found it...

1 comment:

  1. Peel them underwater and, on breaking, find the membrane that sits just under the shell and, once that is gently pulled, most of the shell will come off in one piece.

    Easy-peasy.

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