V for Vendetta Toast – Eggie in a Basket

Several years ago, when we went to see V for Vendetta, I was immediately captivated by the breakfast that V makes for Evey, which was an egg carefully cooked into a slice of bread. Later, Gordon Dietrich makes Evey that very same breakfast, calling it an “Eggie in a Basket”.

Evey: What is that you’re making?
Gordon: We call it “eggie in the basket”. My mum used to make them.
Evey: This is weird.
Gordon: What?
Evey: The first morning I was with him, he made me eggs just like this.
Gordon: Really?
Evey: I swear.
Gordon: That is a strange coincidence. Although, there’s an obvious explanation.
Evey: There is?
Gordon: Yes, Evey. I am V. At last you know the truth. You’re stunned, I know. It’s hard to believe isn’t it, that beneath this wrinkled, well-fed exterior there lies a dangerous killing machine with a fetish for Fawkesian masks. ¡Viva la revolución!
Evey: That is *not* funny, Gordon.
Gordon: Yeah, I know. I’m useless without a studio audience.

I went home and started Googling it and it turned out to be a really simple food sometimes going by “Egg in the Hole” and “Egg in the Middle”.

You can watch a video of the scene here. I remembering my feelings about this scene being very similar to what I felt when reading The Hunger Games because when Evey says that she hasn’t had “real butter” since she was a little girl, for some reason it just brings your perspective of things in a whole different light. Not only are these people repressed in the way they live, but also in the way they eat. Things that we take so much for granted now are simply not available to people like Evey.

It does, however, make you wonder if that’s realistic in a dystopian society. The people of Norway have been going through a nationwide shortage of butter due to heavy rains affecting milk production. People resorted to churning their own butter, so shouldn’t the common people in Evey’s London been able to do the same? Or was milk heavily rationed as well?

Anyway, moving on to the toast.

You start off by taking a cookie cutter and cutting out a circle in the middle of your slice of bread. Melt butter in a skillet on medium and place the slice of bread in. Crack an egg directly into the middle of the circle. Let it cook until you start seeing the egg white decently cooked. You don’t want to have one half cooked only a little and then the other side dark brown. This would leave you with one rather dark side and one light side.

In the movie, V is obviously cooking with a whole lot of butter because his slice is golden brown and excess butter is sizzling on the sides. I just put a little dollop for each side. When I’m ready to flip, I hold the bread slice on my spatula while I add more butter to the pan. The first side will look the best with the circle, while the other side will have the egg seeping all over the bread, so it looks best when you serve it like this. I’ve also used a star cookie cutter for this and it comes out pretty cute for the kids.

Cook it until the egg is firm, or if you like runny yolk, remove it a little earlier.

The first time I had this, I couldn’t believe how good it was, so imagining Evey eating this and not having had butter in years made the scene even cooler. I still make it every so often and it’s always a really delightful and delicious breakfast.