For Parsis, the love of eggs is in their genes

In the years that I lived in Kolkata, I saw quite a lot of Russi Modi.

In those days Russi was chairman of Tata Steel and uncrowned emperor of Jamshedpur. Every summer he would decamp to his house in London’s Belgravia with his friend Aditya Kashyap and eat his way through the continent.

 

When he returned to Kolkata, he lived in a penthouse at the top of the Tata Steel building on Chowringhee and lorded it over the city’s social set.

 

   While Russi ate at the world’s best restaurants, his real love was the egg. Every foodie conversation would inevitably turn to eggs. And he would always brag about the number of eggs he ate. Sometimes I thought there was a Baron Manchausen-like quality to his egg stories.

 

   “Today, I ate an omelette made with 16 eggs,” he would announce. Though the exact number of eggs would vary, it seemed that no omelette could be made, at least in Russi’s kitchen, without the use of a dozen eggs or more.

 

   But it turned out that every story was completely true. Russi really did eat those huge omelettes. When we first met, in 1988, he was already 70 (but a very active 70) and I wondered if it was good for him to eat so many eggs. He was used to answering the question. “Eggs do no harm at all”, he would insist. “They are good for you.”

 

   Medical sources now tell us that he was not wrong but in the 1980s, American doctors had scared us into believing that cholesterol-rich eggs would give us heart attacks. We know now that this was ignorant fearmongering (only a small part of total cholesterol in our bodies comes from dietary cholesterol) but Russi knew, even then, that the doctors had it wrong. He had his cholesterol regularly checked, he said, and it was always lower than the much younger Aditya Kashyap’s cholesterol even though Aditya did not like the rich, egg-filled diet that Russi enjoyed.

 

   And yes, Russi could certainly put it away. JRD Tata, in the course of a tribute to Russi, made the point that Russi did not know the difference between the words ‘gourmet’ (as in foodie) and ‘gourmand’ (as in greedy person).

 

   But every time such criticism was directed at him, Russi had the perfect comeback: If eggs were so unhealthy, he would ask, then why do Parsis who subsist on eggs, live for so long? Surely, they should all have dropped dead at 40 if the American doctors were right?

 

   As it turned out, Russi outlived nearly every one of his contemporaries (even Aditya went before him) before dying in 2014 at the grand old age of 96, still waiting for that final 18-egg omelette.

 

   Long before I met Russi, I had been a fan of Parsi food from my days in Mumbai. At that stage, it was hard to find good Parsi food at restaurants but fortunately my parents had many Paris friends, so I had no difficulty in trying the best Parsi dishes. Even then, I had worked out that once you got past the dhansak, salli boti, saas ni machchi kind of dish, the egg was the lynchpin of Paris cuisine.

 

   It didn’t have to be Russi’s massive omelettes. (Did they maintain poultry farms in Jamshedpur just to keep Russi well-fed, I often wondered.) Parsis, I discovered, put eggs on everything. A bhindi sabzi would be served with eggs on top. A deliciously tangy tomato dish would be topped with eggs. And so on.

 

   My own favourite was papeta par eeda, a dish of potatoes sautéed with onions and finished with whole eggs that were somewhere between poached and fried. As I wrote in Rude Food last weekend, this became one of my favourite dishes and we still make it regularly at home.

 

"For Parsis eggs are not just a second-class protein, as they are to most non-vegetarians who might eat them for breakfast but will prefer meat for lunch and dinner."

  About a decade ago, thanks to passionate advocacy from Israel, where it was described as a local dish, shakshuka spread all over the world. Many Indians who tried shakshuka knew at once what it really was: An amateurish version of the great Parsi egg dishes. It had tomatoes and peppers topped with eggs.

 

  We make variations of the original North African shakshuka at our home but my wife (who is a Punjabi with no Mumbai connection and is, therefore, completely objective) has no doubt that the Parsi egg dishes are vastly superior to anything they have come up with in the Middle East or Africa.

 

   What is it about Parsis and eggs? There are other communities in Mumbai that love eggs. The local Muslims (many of them are also Gujarati-speaking like the Parsis) have many great egg dishes, including most famously keema gotala, but nothing they make has quite the flair of the Parsi dishes.

 

   Perhaps it is because the Parsi egg dishes also fit neatly into the rest of Indian cuisine. After my article on shakshuka appeared, I heard from poet and industrialist Nadir Godrej. His wife Rati had culled egg recipes from Parsi cookbooks which they very kindly sent me. A recipe for tameta par eeda (shakshuka’s cleverer older brother) included a serving suggestion. The dish should be the second course at dinner and it should be followed by chicken curry and rice. The recipe for the classic papeta par eeda suggested that it could be eaten with rotis.

 

  “Parsi love eggs,” Nadir wrote, “and are capable of putting eggs on top of many things besides potatoes including keema, bhindi, spinach, tomatoes, potato straws, mixed vegetables etc. I once joked about eeda par eeda and a friend claimed that his grandmother used to make it (an egg on an omelette!).”

 

   My friend Zubin Songadwala who looks after the South for ITC Hotels is such an egg fanatic that he goes into the kitchens of the hotels he runs and makes ITC’s chefs understand how eggs should be cooked. Last month when I was in Chennai, I took a break from the Grand Chola’s light and fluffy idlis and its outstanding Italian food to enjoy a Parsi egg feast supervised by Zubin. The chefs did not know how to pronounce the names of the dishes, but they had certainly learned how to make them.

 

   Eating Zubin’s egg dishes, I was struck by how different the Parsi akuri is from our normal scrambled egg. Almost every food culture makes some variation of a scrambled egg. Even Gujaratis make an eenda nu shaak. (No, you haven’t missed anything). The North Indian ande ka bhurji sounds similar to the Paris akuri but it has nothing of its complexity or depth.

 

   Which brings us back to where we started. Why did Russi, God bless his soul, like eggs so much? He said it was in his blood. And I guess he was right. For Parsis eggs are not just a second-class protein, as they are to most non-vegetarians who might eat them for breakfast but will prefer meat for lunch and dinner.

 

   For Parsis, the love of eggs is in their genes. Nadir Godrej says it best. Let me end with a poem he wrote about eggs.

 

The egg is an amazing thing
And I, for one, could always sing
Its praises, for it’s packaged well
Within its own protective shell.

 

And in it you will surely find
Fine nutrients of every kind.
It can be cooked in many ways,
Prepared in minutes, not hours or days.
Now quiche and pies are so inviting
But akoori and pora are most eggciting.
Though vegetables don’t go down well
But even they can taste just swell
When we top them with some eggs.
That’s how you give ghaas-phoos some legs!

 

It’s eggs that provide the fringe
Of a lacey cutlet binge.
Eggs are essential when you bake.
There’s lagan nu custard, muffins and cake.
There is so much to choose, By Gosh!
Waffles, meringues, crêpes, brioche!
Whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner
A good egg dish will be a winner.