Eggs

omelet

This is a picture of an omelet I had this semester with chili sauce, no cheese. I had a difficult time with knife and forks upon arrival last summer in the US, especially with omelet, one of the few hot/cooked food made of the universal eggs right in front of “customers”, the Chinese version of which (“蛋饼”/“egg pancake”) we can eat with hands or with chopsticks (see below).

The stir-fry and grill counters are the only spots at school (except fastfood-serving Loft) where the cooking procedures can be seen by all, yet in my town, kitchens of nearly all small restaurants featuring what we gladly call “homemade specialties” are open through a window or door for customers to take a peek, not hard to achieve as according to Chinese culinary tradition one should be very meticulous about limiting cooking time in order to both preserve fresh original taste and remove the rawness of the ingredients. This owner-customer bond is based on mutual trust in non-deliberate contamination by both sides, even in the common and popular “fly restaurants” (hygiene condition of which similar to that of the tables near the disposal area in Chase), customers are allowed entry into the kitchens to use the tanks and toilets, whereas in “Western”/modernized settings “outsider” entry into the kitchen is forbidden.

egg pancakes

As for the cooked food at school that I’m most fond of--eggs, I prefer the most familiar boiled eggs (or “complete eggs” in Sichuan dialect). Steaming is considered the second top choice for making eggs, with losses of nutritional values when stirring and exposure to high temperature for more than what it takes to boil eggs, but today steamed eggs are served more as a type of savory dish with soy sauce, dried seafood for a salty taste or sugar with dates or goji berries tasty enough to avoid the raw eggy smell, the recipes and cooking procedures of which vary geographically and are usually passed down verbally. It is hard for people from my town to imagine popularity of packed ready-made yolk and egg white as from our perspective the tradition of putting “extra” efforts into making eggs without the abundance of materials or assistance of modern utensils should be preserved as an unsaid rule and responsibility of instilling our care and precision into any dietary energy source. 

seafood steamed eggs

In bakery, eggs as a fundamental ingredient is not central to rural Chinese tradition (with moon-cakes and other kinds of dim sum as exceptions derived from more developed South-Eastern region), a craving for eggs did not use to be satisfied from various kinds of Western food available nowadays. My dad often warns everyone of high sodium contained in “imported” foods or what I’ve been having for ten months. I also remember “cakes” were served in my childhood as festival luxury--and only for birthdays children in the neighborhood could have one sizeable “birthday cake” and share with one another as substitute for dinner--while in my father’s childhood, everyone treasured the only boiled egg available each year on his or her birthday.