© Provided by The GuardianPhotograph: Mint Images/Getty Images
With Christmas long over, Easter approaching faster than proofing hot cross buns with conventional yeast, and food trends fading in and out, the egg is a stabilising constant.
All those geniuses who had the time and space to heed the call to homesteading at the start of the pandemic are finally reaping rewards. I applaud them, though I'm somewhat frustrated at the bottleneck in the supply chain they created - causing shortages of seeds, seedlings, beehives and future egg-laying chicks.
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Around April last year, when I usually put in my farm order for pullets, I was told by no less than six of my suppliers that they'd been wiped clean of chickens, ducks and geese at every stage. Apparently even the chicken shelter in Lismore, aimed at the altruism of vegans, had more volunteers than a desirable debutante's dance card.
Those who managed to procure baby chicks early on (and keep them alive through the first few precarious months) are finally enjoying their panic buy's laying age. If that's you, hopefully, like me, you've been in complete rapture upon finding that first magical egg.
© Provided by The GuardianNewly laid eggs are the best for cooking, as the yolks are pert and the whites silky yet firm. Photograph: David Gee 4/Alamy
Eggs are a phenomenally nutritious food source, full of symbolism and meaning to so many cultures. And it turns out they're an excellent pandemic investment. A couple of weeks ago, when a potential close-contact Covid case loomed over our circle, we retreated into lockdown. So we went back to cooking every meal, extending the leftovers into the next one. The egg featured a lot.
Over the two weeks eggs appeared in potato rösti; fish cakes; carbonara; pavlova; flan; custards; noodles; cakes galore . and, when it all got a bit too much, a simple, sunny, fried egg, bathed in rendered lard to get crisp during the cooking process. The result is perfection: crunchy, lacy edges culminating in a pool of buttery, fatty yolk. Just splash on a couple of drops of great-quality fish sauce and put it on a bed of fragrant, fat-grained Japanese rice.
© Photograph: Mint Images/Getty Images'The multihued, varied eggs are truly a bonus now,' Palisa Anderson writes of her ageing but entertaining hens.
We've had heritage chooks for more than eight years now and, incredibly, they are still laying. They certainly go through lengthy periods of non-production, but they are so beautiful that we enjoy them as entertainment more than anything. The multihued, varied eggs are truly a bonus.
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Newly laid eggs are the best for cooking, as the yolks are a pert, sprightly marigold yellow (verging on orange) and the whites manage to be silky and firm all at once.
I use eggs like a broom to sweep everything together. They are the best mediator of ingredients, especially as a quick fix. For example, when there's leftover ham, and herbs wilting away, the most obvious move is an omelette. Another example: there's cold rice in the fridge, some leafy greens, mushrooms, and spring onions sprouting on your window. What's your play? Fried rice, right? But that fried rice is given a bit of magic when you add an egg towards the finishing stage.
This how my mum taught me how to do it: you push all the seasoned rice to one side, tilt the pan or wok, pour some fat into the vacated space and wait until it heats up, then break an egg into it, scrambling it roughly with your spatula, cover the egg over with hot rice and toss it a couple of times. It never fails.
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Older eggs are best used for baking. The whites will have separated away from the shell and the proteins have stretched, making them easier to separate. This leads to more volume upon whipping. A top tip is to make sure you start with room-temperature eggs - I won't get too scientific here, but if all your ingredients start off at the same temperature, it will be easier for them to bind.
When my kids find eggs that look like they've been languishing under the coop for too long, I get them to do a fun experiment: the water-in-the-bucket test. Fill a deep bowl or bucket at least 20cm deep, then ease the eggs in. If any float, they've gone bad and are not worth cracking.
In most Australian cities, it's rare to see anything other than hen eggs in the grocer's or supermarket, but as I spent half of my year in Thailand in 2020, I was reminded that duck, quail and even goose eggs are still common in marketplaces and popular on menus.
Enter the emu egg. Market-gardener savant Kenrick Riley of Wiccawood likes a good yarn, and one morning at the Mullumbimby farmers markets he pulled me aside to regale me of his days as a young buck, mustering on a 64,000-acre station outback of South Blackall, Western Queensland, more than 50 years ago.
He and his brothers would sometimes come across the flat dish of an emu nest while out mustering. Like typical boys with an eye for a delicious adventure, they would lie waiting for the father-to-be to leave the nest. When they got the chance, they'd stuff as many eggs as they could into pockets and saddle bags. Bear in mind each egg can weigh up to 680g - about a dozen hen's eggs. Sometimes they'd have to run off in different directions when the emu dad came back and gave chase.
© Provided by The GuardianThings of beauty: emu eggs range from speckled navy to iridescent emerald. Photograph: PansLaos/Getty Images
From my own experience an emu egg is not easy to crack. The last time I saw one being cooked, a bandsaw was employed. Besides, a cracked emu egg is a wasted decorative art piece. The colours range from a navy, star-speckled night sky to shimmering metallic emerald. They're lovely things to behold, and canvases for the art form Kalti paarti - emu egg carving. Since 1983, only farmed emu eggs can be used and only carved by those who hold a special licence.
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Kenrick and his brothers went to great lengths to preserve the beauty of the eggs. They would shake them to break the yolk, then use a metal knitting needle to pierce them, top and bottom. Like school children being taught the recorder, they'd blow hard to push the contents out onto a waiting hot pan, then cook a feast of scrambled eggs. They'd give the evacuated shell to a cattleman known to be a master carver, who would turn it into a piece of history.
When Kenrick was finally sent to boarding school, he thought it was absolute luxury to have scrambled eggs for breakfast so often. But he wondered how the school cook could find so many emu eggs. At home, hen's eggs were a real commodity and his mother made it clear that they were strictly for cakes and biscuits. It only occurred to him years after that scrambled eggs were not exclusive to the great emu egg.
There's always more to explore with eggs. What in the world is more satisfying than that?