tomato_kumato

I haven’t always been as big a fan of eggs as I am now. I remember being forced to eat scrambled eggs as a child and hating them. I liked hard-boiled eggs, but only because my grandmother had one of those fancy hard-boiled egg slicer things, and I liked seeing the egg split into perfectly even slices.

I watched with awe as my father poked the yolks of his poached eggs, but I had no desire to eat the semi-cooked yellow ooze myself. How strange… now it’s my favorite way to eat eggs, fried over potatoes or sometimes some cooked spinach.

I really started liking eggs in high school, when my best friends and I would traipse down to the diner in the town where our boarding school was for the lunch special: five dollars for eggs, potatoes, toast, juice and coffee. I always got mine fried, very soft, so that I could mop up the yolk with the potatoes.

Since then, I have come to terms with the fact that eggs are the only thing that most college students can afford to eat in abundance, and since the Canadian loves fried eggs (he’ll eat five for breakfast), I’ve started buying the flat of thirty eggs at my local market. We even bought some goose eggs once, although they don’t scramble very well: the texture is very different from that of a chicken egg.

After awhile, even the Canadian got a little tired of fried eggs, and so I began inventing things. Omelettes, scrambles… anything to mix up our regular fare. I’ve been meaning to post these for awhile, but now that I’ve waited so long, I may as well give you all the recipes at once. Enjoy!

I don’t really work from recipes as far as eggs are concerned… mostly I use omelettes as a way to get rid of extras in my fridge. I scramble the eggs with milk, plain yogurt, fromage frais, crème fraîche or sour cream (or a combination) depending on what’s in the fridge, and then I move to the ad-ins. I’ll give you some outlines here though…

Mexican Scramble
The first picture is a Mexican scramble. it has salsa, thawed frozen spinach, and a bit of shredded cheese. I seasoned it with salt, pepper, hot chili pepper, coriander and cumin, and I had some Tabasco sauce on the side. I usually don’t make scrambles, but the amount of salsa in this one really makes it difficult to flip… so voila! A scramble.

Chorizo Omelette
The second picture is an omelette with Spanish-style chorizo (that’s the cooked kind), and some cheese… I think I used provolone. Any mild cheese will do… the Sausage packs a kick!

Gorgonzola and Mushroom Omelette
The last picture is an omelette with Gorgonzola cheese and cooked mushrooms. I fried the mushrooms first and then added the eggs and cheese, seasoning with a lot of black pepper.

The goose egg.

Check out other egg-related posts at the Art You Can Eat roundup on Eggs.

What is it about fried eggs? They’re like a completely different animal from scrambled eggs or omelettes. There’s something about the barely cooked yolk breaking all over whatever else is on your plate that’s so satisfying.

When I was younger, my father used to mesmerize me by pretending the yolks of his fried eggs were eyes, and he would poke them and scream as I watched in disgusted admiration, standing by my old scrambled eggs, just this side of dry.

I’ve seen the error of my ways: even my scrambled eggs are barely cooked now. But my favorite? Fried, with some sort of starch to soak up the yolk. For my father, it was a fork-split English muffin, and I’ll go the Thomas’ route every once in awhile, but the best option is my mother’s home fries. She used to fry them up on random winter mornings before school: one onion for every potato, and one potato for every person. Fried the onions soft in olive oil and butter, adding the starchy potatoes, paprika for color, and salt and pepper. She’d wait until they stuck to the bottom with all the starch and sugar before flipping them, so every potato developed a dark, sweet crust. I made myself some of these potatoes, and then just as they finished, I moved them aside and fried my egg right alongside. When the yolk broke as I plated, I didn’t even mind.