An ode to eggs

I have always had very particular tastes in food. I'm someone who has always loved korolla, but you cannot get me to eat something like jhinga, a vegetable that is universally acknowledged for being, well, not bitter. Apart from my undying love for this very misunderstood vegetable known as bitter gourd, the only other sort of food I can devour is spicy food. As I grew up and the people in my house grew older, their tolerance for spicy food lowered as my appetite only grew bigger. Soon, most items in my house started tasting like paper. Every once in a while a rui maachh curry or daal bhorta comes along that tastes beautifully spicy and makes me cry tears of happiness as well as tears of shukna morich. But the rest of the time, I am left to starve.

In this dire state, I knew that I had to learn to make my own food. That, my friends, is when I discovered eggs. For the first 19 years of my life, I'd stayed away from eggs despite my mother's insistence that I should have one egg every day. First of all, I did not like having breakfast because I thought it made me feel pukish. Secondly, I used to think that eggs were just bland because it does not taste like biryani or sheek kebab or fried chicken.

In reality, it tastes so much better than any of those things. Discovering eggs on a fateful midnight in 2015 completely changed my life. Soon enough I no longer had to depend on other people to make me food. I could make myself excellent, wholesome meals three times a day using the simplest ingredients I have in my fridge. I must mention here that I learned the importance of breakfast in my first year of university, because I realised it was the absence of food in my stomach that makes me pukish and not the other way around. Every morning I have eggs for breakfast and I go out of the house feeling like a champion. 

But eggs are not just breakfast food, no sir, eggs are the most diverse ingredient ever. It goes with everything, you can have it any time of the day. I make fried eggs, boiled eggs, eggs in a basket, poached eggs, and of course, omelette du fromage. Then I pair these with toast, porota, rice, noodles, vegetables, and maybe even korolla. 

Sometimes I make such a perfect sunny side up egg that it makes even the gloomiest rainy days seem full of sunshine and happiness. I don't think I'd mind if that beautiful, orange yolk replaced the sun itself. Other times the omelette du fromage turns out just right and the cheese just oozes out when I cut into the folded egg, and it really makes me believe in myself. After a particularly bad day, I come home and make myself some deshi-style omelette with sautéed onions. When I have that with some khichuri and ghee, I can't help but feel utterly grateful that humankind has been blessed with eggs.

Eggs are like the entry point of cooking; it's the gateway item to learning other dishes. Once I perfected the many different styles of preparing eggs, I moved on to pasta and cakes and meat, and I have not looked back ever since. Eggs go with everything, and they make life so much better every day.

Aanila Kishwar Tarannum started hating on everything the moment she realized why her parents put so many As in her name: because they knew her transcript would be devoid of any vowels. Find out about her relentless rants at aanila.tarannum@gmail.com