Eggs should not be crunchy!

I’ve never been particularly picky about what I eat…fish, organ meats, slimy greens, and yellow squash notwithstanding…but I will own up to being a bit choosy about how some foods are prepared. I don’t think my mother was truly a bad cook…she did turn out some excellent fare from time to time…but she was a lazy, unimaginative and disinterested cook, which put her offerings on the same level as those who were bad cooks.

My mother liked to fry things. She had a massive cast iron skillet in which she prepared everything from “Swiss Steak” (a round steak boiled in tomato soup until it was well done and tough as leather) to “Glop” (undrained fried, crumbled ground beef…lowest cost, highest fat content…mixed with a can of pork and beans, ladled over dry toast). On the stove she kept a kitschy little 3-piece brushed aluminium-and-pink plastic set of containers, one labelled “salt”, one labelled “pepper,” and the third labelled “grease.” I kid you not.

Anything my mother fried was fried in grease from that can. If there wasn’t enough grease, she would add a few gobs of shortening, which was always the cheapest Crisco substitute she could find. And the can was never emptied out and cleaned and filled with “fresh” grease. Only the inner lid, a disk full of fine holes intended to strain out solid bits, was ever washed. Did it get rancid? Of course. Did it make any difference? Of course not.

She seldom cooked breakfast, so her mangled version of fried or scrambled eggs seldom crossed my plate. And just as well, since she took umbrage at my food peculiarities, like cutting all the fat off a piece of meat or forking out the gelatinous pieces of pork fat from the beans before I ate them. I neither salted nor peppered my food, her efforts at the stove being more than sufficient. But once in a while we had breakfast for dinner and that was when, if I could get away with it, I would develop a horrific stomach ache just before dinner and go to bed with nothing but dry toast on my stomach.

Breakfast, at my mother’s hands, was a horrifying affair. Fatty bacon (streaky bacon, for non-Americans…and more streak than bacon) would be fried long enough to render out a good amount of grease, but not long enough to crisp the fat. Floppy slices of bacon with rubbery bits of greasy fat attached would be drained on paper, and the fat remaining in the pan would be further heated until it was sizzling and crackling. Mother then would break eggs into this seething vat of boiling grease and you could hear a roar of crackling as the cold, wet eggs dropped into the roiling fat. Grease would spatter everywhere, usually eliciting a curse or two from the cook, and she would set to work splashing hot grease all over the tops of the eggs to thoroughly cook them. The result was, invariably, tragic.

Have you ever eaten eggs you could not chew? Seriously…have you ever had eggs put in front of you that you were unable to chew? To this day I have never understood why the bacon got the benefit of a few minutes draining on absorbent paper and those eggs did not. Glistening with grease and flecked with burnt bits of bacon that had been floating in the grease, yolks runny and the edges crisp and brown, the eggs could not be cut even with knife and fork. Since the rule in our house was you at whatever Mother put on your plate, breakfast-for-dinner was a horrifying prospect. Rubbery bacon with the fat still uncooked and oozing grease with each grinding of the teeth, crisp eggs floating in a pool of fat, the edges brown and chewy, the underside a stiff, browned, almost plastic sheet, the whites overdone and strongly flavoured, the yolks undercooked and runny…it’s a wonder I can face an egg today!

Scrambled eggs were no better. Into that same overheated grease were tossed a couple of eggs that were then vigorously stirred with a fork until they were crumbly. Swimming in brown grease, they, too, were delivered to table without benefit of draining, so they sat in a slippery pool, their oily fat winking hideously up at me in the harsh kitchen light.

My mother was a person of little patience and therein laid the source of her problems in the kitchen. Whatever was not fried to cinders or boiled into limp greyness was pressure cooked into a colourless mass. Foods requiring patience and finesse never graced our table: homemade soups and stews were rare, casseroles unheard of, and roasts completely unknown. If it couldn’t be boiled, fried, or rendered unrecognizable in the pressure cooker, we didn’t eat it.

In self-defence, at the age of seven, I began to cook. And I started with eggs. I would drag a chair up to the stove, and because my little fingers had trouble cracking eggs without scatter shards of the shell into the pan, I cracked them into a cup where I could fish the shell fragments out before putting the eggs into the pan. I would take a bit of butter (margarine, actually…Mother was too tight to buy anything but the cheapest margarine in the store and then watch its consumption like a hawk) and slowly melt it in the big skillet, waiting until it was liquid but not browned. I would slip the eggs into the butter slowly and let them cook. Because I wasn’t big enough to flip an egg over with any degree of skill or accuracy, I broke the yolks so they could cook through, then delivered the egg to a plate with a piece of dry toast on it…Mother would never know I used the butter for cooking the eggs rather than to butter my toast!

It took a while to master, but I quickly realized that a really good egg had soft edges, was cooked clear through, and actually did not taste like rancid grease. It also had a lovely, delicate flavour when allowed to stand alone and not buried in salt, pepper, burnt flecks of bacon and floating in a puddle of fat. Over time, I branched out into preparing other things for myself, although I never did find acceptable ways to prepare offal or most fish. Greens, I eventually found, were often palatable in salads and yellow squash made an acceptable substitute for pumpkin in pies.

But eggs were one of my first epiphanies of self-reliance: I not only could do for myself, I was capable of doing better than my mother. I was, of course, smart enough to refrain from revealing this information to my mother lest I find breakfast for the whole family dumped on my young shoulders…I was already responsible for cleaning the kitchen after dinner each night and minding my younger, bigger brother after school…I didn’t need more chores!

My husband tells me that I am the best breakfast cook he has ever known. No matter how good the breakfasts are at our various Sunday morning places, he always says mine are the best he has eaten. And he agrees with my breakfast mantra: Eggs are not supposed to be crunchy!

The Eggs and I

The Eggs and I

I am becoming rather annoyed with the eggs around here.

Yes, this is a “spoiled American” rant, as my husband calls it. But the truth is, I am accustomed to certain things about my eggs that are not part of South African eggs and, after four years, some of these things are starting to annoy me.

I don’t mind that you can’t find a white egg to save your soul. Since I no longer have little kids who want to dye Easter eggs, it’s no big deal to me if the shells are white or brown. But it would be nice if the egg shells, regardless of colour, were of a relatively uniform thickness.

What do I mean? Well, anyone who has ever bought and cooked eggs in America has an unconscious expectation that, when cracking eggs, the same amount of force is needed for each and every egg. Americans have this expectation because…well…that is their reality. I doubt it occurs to any American that egg shells come in varying degrees of thickness because in America, they don’t! I have no idea how they do it, but every carton of supermarket eggs that you open will have shells of uniform thickness…the same amount of force you used to crack the first egg will be the same amount of force you need to crack the sixth.

Why is this an issue? Well, in a typical breakfast I make between two and six eggs. I used to crack my eggs right over the pan, but no more. If the egg is thin-shelled, a sharp crack on the edge of the pan will result in shards of shell scattering into the pan like shrapnel. If the egg is thick-shelled, I will have to pound the egg on the edge of the pan numerous times…again, fragging the pan with bits of shell. Thin-shelled eggs burst open unexpectedly, leaving egg on the fingers and shredding the yolk, thick-shelled eggs require digging one’s nails into the barely visible crack and prying the egg open…again leaving egg all over the fingers and often resulting in broken yolks. It’s a good thing that Hubby and I both prefer our eggs cooked with broken, hard-cooked yolks.

Another problem is that South African eggs often have blood spots in them. Now, most Americans would be grossed out by the little quarter-inch bleb of blood floating around in their egg white and would discard the egg. If South Africans did that, there would be a lot of eggs go to waste since I see that spot in fully half the eggs I smash open here. Again, breaking the egg into a bowl allows me to fish out not only the shell shrapnel, but to remove those blood spots, which look like a scab if they are allowed to cook. Again, fingernails are the best tool for this, so again, goopy egg-fingers.

Boiling eggs here has been a no-win situation for me. First of all, no matter what I try, I cannot get the yolks centred. Why is this an issue? Well, have you ever tried to make devilled eggs with the yolk cavity only half there? What about dishes in which the eggs are supposed to be sliced or quartered for garnish? I know all the tricks…I’ve been cooking for half a century now…but South African eggs seem to defy all the rules. No matter what I do, the boiled eggs come out with the yolk almost clinging to the inside of the shell. Last night’s batch was the worst yet…the yolks had migrated to one end of the egg and when I peeled them, the white was so thin over the end that it peeled away with the shell leaving exposed yolk in its wake. I have no idea how South African cooks get their boiled egg yolks centred…or if they even do.

I come to the opinion that the egg industry here doesn’t apply the same…or even similar…product standards that are the norm in the US. For one thing, I’d never seen a rotten egg (off the farm, anyway) in America. Here, I’ve managed to stink up my kitchen with two of them in the past four years. Admittedly, they both came from the same supermarket chain (Checkers) which will never, ever, ever see me buy anything fresh from them again, but the fact remains that I bought a carton of eggs from a major supermarket here and two of them were stinky, sloppy, liquidy, disgustingly rotten. Since I am afflicted with one of those open plan kitchens, the stench quickly filled not only the kitchen, but the dining room too, and enveloped the breakfast bar between them, where my husband was making coffee and awaiting his eggs. Unfortunately, the second bad egg was opened a few days later, repeating the experience. I now stick to Windmill eggs from Pick n Pay, their freshness never having disappointed me.

Americans are also accustomed to having clean eggs. You know…clean…no feathers or dirt or chicken poop sticking to them. Apparently that’s not a big concern here, and another reason that scattering egg shell shrapnel all over the edible part of the egg is not such a great idea. Three of the eggs in the dozen I boiled last night had dirty shells…looking actually like dirt…and one had identifiable chicken poop clinging to it (Grandma Violet used to send me out to the chicken house to collect eggs…I know what a poopy egg looks like). Gone are the days that I simply opened a carton of eggs next to the stove and cracked them into the pan as I wanted them. First it’s a wash, then into the egg basket, then a crack into the bowl followed by a smell test and then a fishing expedition to remove shell splinters and blood spots.

Making breakfast sure isn’t what it used to be!

All the eggs are brown!

Originally published March 31, 2004

While preparing breakfast for my husband this morning it suddenly struck me that I haven’t seen a white egg since I got here. Not that the color of the eggshell makes any difference to me…it doesn’t…but in America most of the eggs are white-shelled and brown-shelled eggs cost more because they are (inaccurately) perceived to somehow be healthier than white-shelled ones. This set me to pondering some of the differences between South Africans and their food and Americans and theirs.

I’ve been doing my grocery shopping here for several weeks now, and have, after trying various markets, settled on Checkers as my primary source of food. I go to Woolies for premium stuff, I try to get my produce at the open air markets at the Rylands and most of my meats at a couple of butcheries (I have a particular favorite for boerewors in Parklands), my “uh oh, we’re out of bread” supplies at the closest market, a Pick n Pay, and everything else at Checkers…cleaning and paper supplies, juice, milk, cheese, bread, etc. In my search for delectable things to please my husband’s palate, I have made quite a few discoveries about how South Africans eat, at least as perceived by the people who sell the food.

1) South Africans have a considerable sweet tooth! I was strolling down an aisle at the market the other day looking for a product and realized that there was an entire aisle devoted exclusively to sweets! The whole length of the aisle! I was amazed! Americans are perceived as being a sweet-loving people, but I’ve never seen anything like it in America! When you look for marshmallows in the US, for example, you have only three choices: minis, full-sized, and sometimes colored marshmallows; and there are generally only two brands to choose from: Camp Fire and the store’s generic brand (which was probably made by Camp Fire). The marshmallow selection here would just about take up the entire candy portion of an American supermarket! Multiple brands, shapes, colors, sizes, even flavors…you have more variety in marshmallows alone than Americans have in trendy coffees! And then there were the candy bars!! My goodness…such choices! I wandered the candy aisle wondering if I had died and gone to Chocoholic Heaven! But being a good little girl (who is nearly at the end of her household budget for the month) I resisted the urge to splurge and indulge my chocoholic tendencies. I get my budget account renewed tomorrow…who is kidding whom?...there is a reason I am putting off buying groceries until then!

2) South Africans are real carnivores! It is inconceivable in America to have shops that sell nothing but jerky (biltong). On my first visit here, a year ago, I was fascinated by the biltong shop in the local strip mall because something like that could never make enough profit to survive in America. Jerky, as biltong is known in America, is sold in little sealed plastic packets that are kept beside the till in convenience stores like 7-11. And it is never made from game meats, only beef, with various treatments to alter the taste (pepper, chili, teriyaki, etc.). And dried sausage? Never saw it before I came here (and I come from a family in which my father made his own venison jerky after a hunting trip, and my grandfather prided himself on his homemade sausages). The variety and quantities and quality of meats here is stunning! The beef is deliciously tender and flavorful (although I am having to relearn the names of cuts of meat because what they call a porterhouse here does not bear even a vague resemblance to a porterhouse in California), lamb is plentiful, and I have never, ever seen mutton in a market before, or game meats, for that matter. Some of the best boerewors (which is also unknown in America and a particular favorite of mine!) I have eaten here was made from game meat and purchased at a SuperSpar. South Africans seem inordinately proud of their braais, but because virtually every household in America has at least a kettle-type barbeque and cooks on it frequently, the braai, of course, was initially no big thing to me. But the meats that are to go onto those braais…what choices we have here and how wonderful they are! Marinated chickens already flattened to braai well, tasty pieces of meats already on skewers, boerewors...virtually all Americans have barbecues, but South Africans have elevated the concept almost to an artform! YUM!

3) South Africans…or at least Capetonians…have a thing about calamari that I neither share nor understand. Even if the stuff wasn’t disgusting to even contemplate eating, once in the mouth…ick!! I am astonished at the quantities of calamari served here and the creative ways people have thought of to serve it. I ordered a paella at a restaurant recently, anticipating a bed of saffron rice studded with chicken, mussels, clams, prawns, and perhaps a piece of fish or two. I got a plate full of oversalted reddish-brown goo…I couldn’t tell the mushroom chunks from the chicken bits, but the little legs sticking up from the monochromatic mass like those of a dead spider were a dead giveaway as to the identity of those little buggers. I picked at least two dozen of the nasty little things out of the rice but missed one and it ended up in my mouth…oh, yuck, it was horrid…a gritty texture and dark musky flavor that put me off the entire rest of the plate. EW! as we say in America… eeeewwwwwwwwww! To be fair, I have to admit I am not a big fan of fish in general, and so far the only one I have found here that I like is Cape Salmon (yes, I’ve tried snoek, a local favorite…too oily, too boney, too fishy tasting for me), but that is no surprise, considering that in my entire life in America, I found only four fish that I like…and I am the daughter and granddaughter of avid sportsmen and grew up eating the stuff, courtesy of Dad’s or Grandpa’s latest fishing trip. I like tuna salad, shrimp, crab, lobster, abalone, scallops, salmon, halibut, trout, and catfish…that is, at present, my full range of seafoods that I consider fit for human consumption. Calamari is fish bait. Ick!

4) What fabulous restaurants we have to choose from! Maybe it is just Cape Town, but man, I could eat out every night here…and I like to cook. For my husband’s birthday I found an authentic sushi bar and we had dinner there (prawn and salmon sushi for me, thank you) and I’m almost embarrassed to admit that the California rolls at Maz in Sea Point were better than the California rolls in California. Killer wasabe and delectable pickled ginger! I’ve been to a couple of Indian restaurants, some seafood restaurants (please, Ocean Basket, more offerings for those of us who are merely accompanying the fish-lovers), Italian, continental and quite a few others. I haven’t found a Mexican restaurant I want to try yet, though. I grew up eating Mexican food and the few so-called Mexican dishes I have had here were a grave disappointment. I’ve found a couple of Mexican restaurants but a quick perusal of the menus sent me scuttling away. Trust me on this…I have been eating Mexican food for decades…I lived in the Mexican part of town for years and frequented the local eateries where my rusty, halting Spanish was my only means of communication…Mexican cuisine does NOT include calamari! In the Gulf of California Mexican fishermen catch and sell calamari to the Japanese restaurant industry, but they do not eat it themselves! Any Mexican restaurant in South Africa that includes calamari in their offerings does not get my approval! (I brought a Mexican cookbook with me just in case.) All in all, however, I have found eating out here in Cape Town to be an unparalleled pleasure, from breakfast at a roadside farm stall to lunch at a local mall to dinner in town, it is one of the great pleasures of living here.

5) The produce is fantastic! I’m not too impressed with Fruit and Veg City…the veggies were limp, not crisp, and rubbery broccoli just doesn’t do it for me. But once I found the open air veg market at the Rylands, I’m a happy camper. My favorite food is fresh fruit, and there is a stall there that sells mangoes that must come straight from heaven. I have discovered litchis…never even heard of them before I came here and now they rank in my top ten favorite fruits. I bought the most gorgeous, red red red tomatoes this week, and beautiful crisp snap beans. The cauliflowers and cabbages are the biggest I have ever seen in my life, and my grandfather used to grow his own huge cabbages for making sauerkraut…South African cabbages dwarf anything I have ever seen in Grandpa’s garden! I’m wondering what the apparently national obsession with creamed spinach and yellow squash is, though…they show up as the standard veg with almost every restaurant meal and I gotta tell you, those two rank near the absolute bottom of my list of edible veggies…just above fried parsnips, I think. Hmmm…I think I have just come up with a way for me to whittle down a few of those extra kilos that cling to me like a frightened child…to heck with BioSlim and other quackeries, a diet of calamari, creamed spinach and mooshed up yellow squash should see me very thin in very short order!