This post is another chapter from my new book, Strong Water: Tales of a Master Sommelier’s Life in Food, Wine, and Restaurants. It’s a collection of essays written over the last ten-plus years that will be published this fall. One of the sections of the book is about food. Eggs, in a number of different variations, have always been a favorite.
“Oh, I frequently think every now
and then of the glorious fruit
of the noble hen
Eggs, eggs, E, double-G, S-eggs”Dr. Seuss
Eggs. Nature’s perfect food in its most curious package. Since the dawn of time, mankind has been frying, poaching, boiling, deviling, scrambling, and sucking them in countless numbers. My own culinary egg history has a long cluck, beginning with visits to my maternal grandma’s farm. There, she fried eggs up by the dozen in an ocean of reused bacon grease, serving them with steak and fried potatoes for my uncles. They would meet at her house early every morning for breakfast, except on weekends. The three of them would show up separately in their Dodge pickups. Once inside, they’d take off their wide-brimmed cowboy hats and table any cigars already in progress. These were the cheap-ass cigars with green candela wrappers that smelled like burning dog droppings. My grandpa had supposedly smoked them, so the boys did too.
Then for the better part of an hour, my uncles would sit and drink huge cups of black coffee so strong it could double as an industrial solvent. Grandma would fix them breakfast and fuss over them while wanting to know what was going on in every square inch of the farm.
My next egg memory is tied to an experiment during a Boy Scout outing. One spring weekend campout, my patrol decided to take one for the team and be the first to try out the dehydrated food that was being considered for the upcoming long-term summer camp. We consulted a list of victuals from a camping supply company that ranged from chipped beef—which epically sucks in any form—to a dessert called pineapple surprise. Of course, there were dried powdered eggs for rise and shine time.
I don’t need to go into detail about how the weekend worked out. Let’s just say that the members of my patrol spent a lot of time staring wistfully—and hungrily—at the fare being whipped up by the other patrols. Mornings were especially bad. Even when the directions were precisely followed, the eggs ended up looking and tasting like shredded Styrofoam packing material. I’m sure powdered eggs were developed by a plastics scientist. One look, one bite, and they probably thought, “here’s a substance we can use for packing material. It will never degrade and will collect in landfills for all time.”
My next memory of eggs is from high school, getting ready for early morning fall marching band rehearsals. Martin, my dad, would insist on making me breakfast that consisted of a small glass of frozen OJ, two fried eggs, and a piece of almost-burnt toast with a small slab of near-frozen margarine that had somehow crash-landed on the blackened surface. Martin had a way with eggs that consisted of a small frying pan, a bit of margarine or Crisco, and high heat. The recipe was simple. Fry the eggs until they stop talking. Flip them and repeat. If they don’t bounce when they hit the plate, they’re not done.
At some point during college, I moved from eggs over medium to ordering them sunny side up. For whatever reason, I liked the two yellow happy faces staring up at me from the plate. I also relished cutting around the yolks until it was time to pop them in my mouth and feel them go all runny and squishy. My wife Carla remembers this strange culinary ritual from when we first started dating. It gave her the creeps. What was I thinking?
Here in New Mexico, eggs have always been the perfect vehicle for red or green chile—or both. The latter is called “Christmas” in the local vernacular. A personal favorite is huevos rancheros. I skip the beans now and just stick to the potatoes. Otherwise, the rancheros will stay with you long after the huevos have left the building.
Then there are deviled eggs. Of late, they’ve become a chichi and pricey appetizer in fine dining joints. Talk about gross margin. But they can be oh-so-good. Believe it or not, champagne is a perfect match with spicy deviled eggs.
Otherwise, these days I stick to the tried-and-true soft scramble when it comes to personal egg styling. The soft scramble is not unlike doing the soft shoe. Both require the right timing and feel. The late Gregory Hines could do the soft shoe like no other. He probably ate his eggs soft scrambled as well. Too bad we couldn’t have shared breakfast at some point. He could have shown me how to do the soft shoe. And I would have told him about Christmas.