Poached egg, spaghetti, flavored masa

A tiny pot. A teeny-tiny pot and few tablespoons of any kind of vinegar. The cheap kind. The kind that comes in half gallon jugs. White or Cider. Whatever. The vinegar makes the albumen go, "Ew, ew, ew, don't touch me." And if the albumen doesn't actually think that it still behaves that way reliably. You can count on the egg white pulling tight and not wandering around all over the pot. 

The water never boiled. When the water almost boiled then the pot was removed from the burner. This egg poaching business is done off the heat at near boiling temperature. Why? Because the cold refrigerated egg white and yolk together visibly denature at 180℉ / 82℃ sufficiently to suit me, and the white tightens up worse and worse after that, the yolk cooks. Removed soon enough and the white will stay silky and the yolk will stay liquid. 

Under normal circumstances, without vinegar, and with time, the temperature that egg whites and egg yolks cook is expressed as a range of temperatures, just like chocolate but for different reason. 

144-149℃ / 62-65℃ range that proteins in egg whites denature.

149-158℃ / 65-70℃ range that proteins in egg yolks denature

Now those temperature ranges seem rather low don't they? Compared to that, what I am doing off the heat is aggressive. And compared to all that, what is done to eggs in a frying pan is straight up egg-abuse. 

Normally, without acid, the whites of eggs and the yolks of eggs denature at different temperatures over time. They begin denaturing when held for several minutes at the target temperatures. Pasteurized eggs are one degree lower than non-pasteurized eggs. My experience is acid in the water protects the eggs, or causes them to become protected, so the cooking temperature is raised noticeably. Egg yolks are protected by the egg whites which denature at lower temperature range than the yolks do. Yet the yolk sits there untouched while the white denatures because insufficient time is allowed for the heat of the water to reach them. 

The egg is lifted out with a regular serving spoon. There isn't any water to tip out because the egg is taking up the whole spoon. The scraggly bits of white are trimmed around the edges of the spoon with a dinner knife. 

I heard a character on television say that sun dried tomatoes are the gayest of the tomatoes. I found that very funny, but it showed an apparent lack of appreciation for concentrated flavor. These sun dried tomatoes in the pasta could have hydrated longer. 

The masa has a lot of dehydrated onion in it and powdered garlic dry restaurant-type chile flakes which seems to be about 75% seeds. As you know by now the seeds contain no capsaicin whatsoever except for a tiny dot at the end where the seed connected to the membrane which does contain capsaicin. You can test this by separating seed from connective membrane with with an X-Acto blade then biting into the seed. Nothing happens. 

The masa was prepared in reverse as I do with other doughs. Water first. The hot water hydrated the onion and the chile flakes. Then masa powder in increments until a dough forms which is about fifteen seconds. The dough can be adjusted with either more water or more powder. Formed into a patty and fried. Water added to the pan by the tablespoon to keep the patty steaming, the pan covered.