Lessons in Flipping

"Studying" for class, and you might guess, involves a fair amount of eating. I'm still working on egg mastery, and as you can see based on the picture below, I have not perfected the art of flipping an egg.

Chef Tim made it look so easy, just sliding the egg out of the pan, coaxing it into a gymnastic manuever and setting it down gently and unbroken to cook on the opposite side. In class, he instructed one of my lab partners to flip his egg right after his perfect dismount--and she nailed it. She passed the egg and pan off to the next person who flipped it right onto the floor. Back at our work stations, I tried my hand at flipping to a small audience of four and managed to toss only half the yolk on the floor. It's apparently all in the wrist.

Sunday afternoon, I gave it another go with what seemed like perfectly good eggs. However, there must have been something wrong with them because all they did was this:

And then this:

No self-respecting egg would ever act in this manner, falling apart and slopping all over the place. Whatever is the world coming to? No matter. They still tasted good even if they would have failed me out of class.

Chef Tim said of fried eggs, "It's a basic skill, but could you call yourself a chef if you couldn't even flip an egg?"