Eggs-cellent
April 29, 2005
Growing up in a restaurant, my family and I would eat pretty late. Our dinner came after the last fortune cookies were handed out.
My siblings and I usually ate first so we didn’t go to bed too late. Still, dinnertime was around 9:30 p.m.
One of the dinners I remember was when my dad would make eggs for us — either scrambled or sunny side up with a splash of soy sauce. I never thought eggs to be a weird dinner entrée — until the fourth grade.
It was a class project in which we told what we ate the night before. On my turn, I told my classmates that I had eggs and steamed rice. Everyone laughed at me and gave me this strange stare. Someone asked — in near disgust — why I’d eaten eggs for dinner when it was a breakfast food.
I was embarrassed. I remember my ears getting hot and my cheeks becoming numb. I didn’t know how to answer; I didn’t know what to answer. I went home that day and told my dad why we couldn’t eat normal dinners at normal times.
In retrospect, I feel bad for asking my dad that question. So what if I didn’t have fishsticks or mac and cheese. Funny thing was, we rarely ate eggs for breakfast, except for hardboiled eggs with sweet potatoes and congee.
I got over the “eggs at night” thing pretty quickly. The egg was an all-purpose, any-time-of-the-day food for my family. Hardboiled, pickled, fried, scrambled, coddled or steamed, eggs were used in everything from cakes to medicinal treatments.
When I lived in China, lunch or dinner usually featured scrambled eggs or a tomato-egg dish (jidian gen shihongshi or fanqie dan). The latter is a widely popular main course in Sichuan. A hot wok, fresh tomatoes, scallions, ginger and fresh eggs make this dish out of this world.
Eggs are also used in “sweet soups,” that have medicinal and health benefits. Poached eggs and Chinese “rock candy” are said to soothe a dry throat and lung, and aid in respiratory health. Poached eggs boiled with milk are supposed to boost children’s health and immune systems. And a hardboiled egg and a silver dollar rubbed on a forehead is said to quell a migraine.
The incredible, edible egg got a bad rap 20 years ago for being a culprit of cholesterol and saturated fat. It’s only been in the last decade or so that doctors and people are rethinking all that.
And it’s about time. Eggs are one of nature’s most nutritious foods. They’re the only food that naturally contains vitamin D and all nine essential amino acids that our bodies need for healthy muscles, organs, skin, hair, tissue. Protein is composed of 23 amino acids, and nine of these cannot be made by the body. These nine need to come from food, and eggs have all nine.
One large egg has 71 calories, 5 grams of fat and 6 grams of protein. But it also delivers an arsenal of vitamins, thiamin, riboflavin, folate, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc and phosphorous. Pretty good deal, for an affordable protein source.
And in terms of cholesterol, a healthy adult eating a low-fat diet and exercising regularly can eat up to two eggs a day without raising blood cholesterol levels (one egg has about 190 milligrams). If you want to lower your saturated fat intake (1.5 grams of saturated fat), you can eat only four yolks a week and eat more egg whites, or replace half the eggs in recipes with egg whites.
We need to jettison the idea, or fear, that all fat is bad. Yes, eggs have fat. Eating too many high-fat foods puts a strain on our hearts and cells. But we’ve been so obsessed with no-fat fads, that our country is actually getting fatter, with higher incidences of diabetes and cancer. Fat is an essential nutrient. It provides energy, and fat is needed to absorb vitamins A, D, E and K. Most importantly, it fills us up so we don’t overeat.
Fried Shrimp with Eggs
• 8 oz. peeled, deveined shrimp
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 2 stalks of scallions
• 6 eggs
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
• cooking oil
Rinse shrimp and sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt and cornstarch, then rinse gently with cold water. Set in colander and let drain. Finely chop the scallions, beat eggs and add salt, pepper and sesame oil. Heat wok, or large frying pan, and add 2 tablespoons oil. Make sure that the wok/pan is hot before adding oil. Fry the shrimp until they turn pink (about 3 minutes), remove and drain. Add more oil if needed, add eggs, allowing it to soft set and then stirring gently, add shrimp, scallions and cook until eggs are firm. Serve with rice.
Reach the Picky Eater at pickyeater@asianweek.com.
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