Swiss chard and poached egg, two ways

I'm having a bit of an identity crisis... in my kitchen. It's what happens when you are Korean and you spend the first decade of your life in Kansas - you grow up eating Korean food at home and 'American' food at school or friends' houses.

Years later when you're stocking your own kitchen, you discover that you have two or three versions of everything - Western (i.e. balsamic and champagne vinegar, olive oil, basil, rosemary, etc.) and Korean (sesame oil, rice vinegar, gochujang, etc.). Even rice! I currently have basmati and Japanese, and only by sheer will power did I resist buying some brown rice and wild rice. Couple this with living in New York, a can of coconut milk and a jar of chipotles in adobo sauce and you have one overwhelmed pantry.






Since undertaking the seemingly monumental task of using up my pantry items, I have been most grateful to the adaptability of the humble egg. One of my favorite ways of eating eggs usually involves a very soft egg - just barely cooked whites and a runny yolk - with some greens. I was happy with the sunny-side egg, but now I'm positively enamored with the poached.

I'm still working on my technique (and am frankly confused by the conflicting information out there), but currently, I have been poaching eggs like so:

• barely simmering water (tiny bubbles forming at bottom of pan) with a splash of vinegar
• gentle whirpool 'vortex'
• egg, cracked into a small bowl, then carefully dropped into water
• cooked for about 3-4 minutes
• carefully lifted out with slotted spoon and slightly drained

Both of these preparations involves sauteed Swiss chard, a poached egg, and some sort of carb base.

Korean-style
Swiss chard, rice, poached egg, gochujang, sesame oil, sesame seeds

No matter what I do, I always get a few floaty egg white pieces.


I make my gochujang sauce using a little sugar (sometimes I aid in the dissolving of the sugar by adding a bit of hot water), gochujang, and sesame oil.



It's kind of an alternative bibimbap. Swiss chard tastes pretty good with gochujang!

Western-style
Swiss chard, red onion, polenta, poached egg, olive oil, pecornio


Not only do the ingredients have crossover appeal, but so does my cooking equipment - that's polenta from my rice cooker.


The extra sprinkling of pecorino is the key here.

Similar ingredients, two very distinct flavors. Actually, maybe this is not so much of a crisis after all - perhaps more of an opportunity... to eat poached eggs all the time.