Dads (and men) and their eggs — a recipe
Three fathers scramble for breakfast — and a frittata in time for Father's Day
Bonjour! Bonjour!
My father owned what I always thought of as a grocery store and what my mother always called a supermarket, and he could tell if a melon was ripe from 20 paces. He could also heft a steak in the palm of his hand and nail its weight to within an eighth of an ounce, a talent that delighted me. And while it was my mother who regularly did the food shopping, it was my father who was in charge of Sunday morning breakfast. He bought smoked fish at the “appetizing” store down the street from his market and bagels and bialys at the bakery next to it. My mother would set everything out on platters and my father would stand over the chubby white fish with its crinkly iridescent skin and bone it, beautifully. It was his one kitchen job. He did it well, but never did more, which is probably why, when I told my mother that I remembered him scrambling eggs for me, she was stunned.
“Not possible,” she insisted, “Your father wouldn’t have known where to begin.”
She might have been right, but the memory I have carries the strength of reality. I know the kitchen we were in, which means I was about 10 — we moved a bunch, so pinning down an address also pins down a time — and I can see him at the stove and me in the doorway leaning in. He made the eggs the way he liked them — cooked until they clustered into nuggets — and we ate them with gobs of Welch’s concord grape jelly. I’m sure of it.
While my mother nodded at the description of the popcorn eggs, she wouldn’t concede that he’d made them: “I’m sure that he never, not once in his life, not ever, scrambled an egg.”
Maybe he didn’t make me that breakfast. But maybe he did. I want him to have, not just because there’s something sweet about the memory, but because it adds credence to an idea I’ve had for a while: Breakfast eggs are man’s work. Or at least they’re a job that some men (that would be guys in my family) choose to do.
I’m sure that Michael could be a good cook, but he limits himself to bread and fabulous pizza (he’s got a way with dough), tuna salad (he claimed this as his own because I’m skimpy with the mayo) and eggs, scrambled, over easy and rolled into an omelet. He leaves the poaching and hard boiling to me.
When we got married, I wanted to cook, but didn’t know how and so I made everything — including complicated dishes like coulibiac — in an effort to fast-track my learning. I was a college student who owned two cookbooks and had plenty of time to read them and play in the kitchen. Why would I have left eggs to Michael? How did I even know that he could cook them? But he could and he did and 50+ years later, he’s still the egg man.
I asked him if he’d cooked eggs as a kid. Nope. Had anyone taught him to cook eggs? Nope. He thinks he began making eggs when he was in graduate school — his roommate made dinner and he made … well, nothing until he started making eggs-in-a-pan. He was a self-taught scrambler. And a good one. Unlike the eggs my father made, Michael’s are creamy with soft, wavy curds. He uses the slow-stir method endorsed by Rex Stout’s fictional connoisseur, Nero Wolfe.
Who makes the eggs in your house?
As for Joshua, he never made eggs while he was living with us. In fact, he didn’t even eat them. But today he’s in charge of breakfast for Gemma and VV and he makes them eggs every morning. Sometimes yellow, sometimes green and last week, the eggs were both yellow and green — he included chopped ramps that Linling had gotten at the greenmarket. Joshua has perfected the thin-as-a-crepe egg. Kind of like an omelet, but not. Kind of like a pancake, but not. It’s its own kind of egg and it gets neither Welch’s jelly nor hot sauce, although I think VV would like that.
Like his father, Joshua is an egg autodidact.
What is it about men and eggs? And yes, I’m asking this seriously.
Are eggs today what grilling was for suburban men of the 1950s? And, in case you were wondering, for about three years, my father was a suburban man of the ‘50s, but he didn’t grill.
Thanks to Antonella, I now know that YouTube is full of men trying to make the perfect scrambled egg; it’s also full of Gordon Ramsay teaching people how to make scrambled eggs.
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Eggs for Father’s Day, any day or even any night
I’m fascinated by frittatas, or what the Spanish call tortillas. I came to them late, never having made them, eaten them in a restaurant or traveled to a country where they were popular when I was young. I think I had my first frittata 25 years ago, but I’ve since made up for lost time — I love to cook them.
A frittata is a cross between an omelet and a thick egg pancake. Learn how to make a simple frittata and you can play around with it endlessly — truly, there’s no limit to the things you can fold into it, put over it or serve it with. Once the eggs are set stovetop, you move the frittata to the oven and go your merry way until the buzzer rings. And there’s more — the frittata belongs to that cherished band of dishes that can be served at room temperature. It’s great for brunches and buffets and picnics, if you do that kind of thing (and I think you should). It has all the versatility of quiche, but no crust. All the good-for-you-stuff of breakfast eggs, but it’s posher and pizzazzier.
Dream of this frittata from Ali Slagle
I love Ali and I love her food and I was thrilled when I found out that she was working on a cookbook. And tickled that Mark Weinberg, who was the photographer on BAKING WITH DORIE, and Samantha Seneviratne, who was the food stylist, were working on her book. The title is pure Ali: I DREAM OF DINNER, SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO. And with Mark, Sam and Ali working together, it’s beautiful. Of course.
So, I’m thinking frittata for Father’s Day. But here’s what I’m not sure of — should I make the frittata? Or should I teach Michael to make it? It’s a little like the adage, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Frittatas forever!
Scroll down for a frittata that I created especially for Father’s Day. It’s got most of the fixings that Sunday morning breakfasts had when I was kid, so I think of it as a kind of an homage to my father. It’s also — like most frittatas are — very play-aroundable.
Happy Father’s Day to all fathers and to all those we love like fathers. Whether you make a frittata or dad does or no one does, just take a moment to tell all the people in your life that you love them.
📚 You can find more recipes in my latest book Baking with Dorie, a recipe for a Western Frittata in Everyday Dorie, and get ready for Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by pre-ordering at Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon or RJ Julia (signed).
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FATHER’S DAY FRITTATA
Lox, onions and tomatoes, hold the bagel!
Make a frittata once and you’ll be able to make this kind of egg dish over and over, multiplying or subtracting or swapping add-ins as you go along. It’s a great recipe to tuck into your repertoire, a pretty one, a delicious one and one you can serve in so many ways and at just about any temperature barring icy cold. While I came up with this frittata for Father’s Day breakfast — it’s a hark back to my childhood when, on Sunday mornings, my father would head out early in the morning to buy us bagels, lox (and lots of other kinds of smoked fish), cream cheese and all the fixings — one glance will tell you that no matter when you whip it up, it will be welcome.