Food glorious food. I love food, I have tried the meats of quite a few animals –for example: beef, lamb, bacon – oh the bacon – pork, gammon, chicken, goose, duck, partridge, horse, ostrich, venison or curries made of indeterminate breed or species – all delicious. I have tried fruits from around the globe – too numerous to list, all delicious. I have enjoyed vegetables, nuts, grains, pulses and beans of all shapes and sizes that have been presented to me hot and cold – including the truly wonderful Brussels Sprout. Again all delicious.

I would say my favourite ‘type’ of food is seafood. I have a passion for fish, Sea Bass being my No.1 cooked fish and Yellow fin Tuna my preference raw. All kinds of seafood from prawns to whelks; Razor fish to Octopus.

I am getting hungry so enough with the lists, you get it – I like food. Oooh I just thought of toast.

Anyway…

I have sampled cooking from most genres – English, French, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Italian, Cajun, American, Japanese, Thai, Barbeque to name a few.

However there is one foodstuff that is truly and without question the most evil substance with calorific value… the loathsome coconut.

I have had an aversion to this white seed for as long as I can remember. It is all things to do with it. Yes the taste is something I would not like if that was it. But it’s also the texture. If however the coconut is desiccated then a whole extra level of unpleasant is piled on top.

To describe the texture of desiccated coconut I have a little story. Back in the day my wife had a green skirt. This green skirt was made from, if memory serves, polyester. Now we have all worn something made from or with polyester. However this green skirt was made of a polyester with remarkable properties. It had a kind of nap. When dry it was soft and, I don’t know – furry?

Wet straight out of the washing machine however, it took on a strange touch. If you rubbed it between your fingers it had the ability to render your whole arm numb. Tingly at first in the fingers and then just plain numb. That in a nutshell is coconut (‘scuse the intended pun)

It’s like that sound you get when you scrape a knife on a plate. I know it’s a bit tenuous to liken a texture to a sound but you get the metaphor.

I can just about stomach coconut milk in curries, but not coconut flesh. No Korma for me then.

Don’t even show me a Bounty either. I would rather lick the bottom of an ashtray.

With two Hash Browns Please

Hang on, I’ll just click into rant mode… Click.

First things first, I love McDonalds ‘Double Sausage and Egg McMuffins’, truth be told I like all of the breakfast menu – the bagels, the bacon the egg, the fruit and last but not least the Hash Browns. The “scrambled” egg they put in the Big Breakfast is admittedly naff. Edible but naff.

Why, oh why, oh why do they have to stop serving these delicious, if artery clogging, meals at 10:30am. What’s wrong with that picture.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a Cheeseburger and fries, I love the Deli Sandwiches and the salads. It has to be stated here and now that the burgers at Burger King are better for sure, but I still like a Big Mac now and again. And like my youngest daughter, I devour McNuggets like they are going out of fashion.

But, breakfast items are where its at. I’m not here to debate the relative nutritional value, or lack thereof, of McDonalds food. Or any other fast food outlet you care to frequent.

No, my beef  (no pun intended) is with timings and menus. I asked a couple of managers and the official excuse – I say excuse, McDonalds would say something in management speak I refuse to type – is that they can’t put pork and beef on the same grill.

Hmmm, am I missing something here or would two grills, one for pork and one for beef, be too much to ask. McDonalds have money coming out of every orifice, surely they can afford another grill. Doesn’t have to be a big one, just enough to satisfy the desires of Muffin munchers such as myself. They introduced a new workstation, with new equipment, for the excellent Deli sandwiches. So it’s not as if there isn’t room either. Then again there are Bacon versions of most of the Burgers and Chicken.

I suppose they have highly paid, highly educated, consultants who state that people don’t want breakfast food after 10:30 and that Burgers, Salads and Deli’s are the order of choice in the evening.

They would be wrong.

Not completely wrong I concede, but wrong in the sense of not being completely correct. OK I’m just one nobody from a nowhere town, but a lot of people I know are with me on this one. I wonder how many agree with the notion of eating what they want when they want. McDonalds have the ingredients laying about in the fridge. Offer it for sale and maybe, just maybe, more people would eat there.

So come on McDonalds let me eat the things I want to eat.

“Double Sausage and Egg McMuffin please – yeah I know it’s 8 o’clock at night but so what!”

Is it me? I love fried eggs, but I’m particular in the way they are cooked but more so in the way they are consumed.

The best way, for me at least, to cook an egg to perfection is a three point plan.

• Point 1: Don’t have the oil – or to be really great, lard – too hot. It makes the white bubble, not good, and produces that brown crap around the edge and underneath, also not good. A perfect fried egg’s white should be just that, white.
• Point 2: Don’t, I repeat Don’t, ever, and I mean it, pop the yolk whilst cracking the egg into the pan. Ever.
• Point 3: Flick not flip. Flick the oil/lard over the yolk. Don’t flip the egg – this could produce the nightmare situation of yolk sack breakage. Too horrible to contemplate.

We have the perfectly cooked chicken ovum on our plate. Time to eat the treat. Now I have been called weird and strange – on more than one occasion, and to be honest on many a subject * – but I eat my eggs in a regimented and structured way.

First off, I cut the white off, using straight cuts with the knife. So as the yolk and a little white is left. Then I eat the rest of the breakfast or dinner. It has to be stated here and now that a ‘Full English Breakfast’ is the daddy of all meals, and a personal favourite.

Then, once the meal has been consumed. The Yolk. Slip it onto the fork with care and attention, mustn’t break that delicate membrane keeping all that yellowy goodness intact. One fluid motion and it’s in the pie-hole. Slowly break the seal with the tongue, and let the flavour flood out into the mouth and then I take my time to savour that flavour, for it is a fleeting pleasure. And remember, there is nothing more heart breaking than egg-yolk on porcelain.

And there we have it, the perfect fried egg experience. I have been eating eggs this way for as long as I can remember and today at work, a kindred spirit arose from the mire of philistine yolk breakers. Brian, a gentleman of advancing years revealed his credo of egg consumption. Exactly as above described.

I am not alone.

( * buttered Weetabix anyone? )