Grandma's Fried Eggs

My grandmother, who taught me how to cook eggs perfectly, in her wedding dress, 60 years on

Grandma’s breakfast cooking focused on the eggs; other cooking she doled out to others eager to help though half-awake, but the eggs could have been her signature dish, such was her level of skill. Each brown farm egg, taken from a red farm hen, and on rare occasions, still warm from the sitting thereon, would be cracked open into a saucer lest the yolk broke - in which case it joined others that were soaked in bread and given to the dogs, or else used in baking later on in the day.

She’d also carefully scrutinise the contents of the saucer to ensure no little bits of egg shell were found therein, in which case she’d hoik them out, invariably with her right thumb that had been amputated at the top joint courtesy of an infection in the days before antibiotics. 

Tilting the little egg pan – the one that was only ever used for frying eggs – to one side, she would put just the right amount of butter in it (nothing but butter would do, and just a teaspoonful of it at that), and then she’d gently slide the egg into the pan. Keeping the pan at a slight tilt, she would continually splash hot butter onto the yolk with a teaspoon, thereby ensuring the perfect fried egg, with the white just set and a perfectly runny, but not raw, yolk.

In her cooking, there was only one kind of fried egg, and that was it, a high standard from which she never deviated. The concept of easy-over or frying the yolk hard – why, she’d do it for a guest, but Family just had to accept the de facto fried egg standard. Not that anyone ever complained, but it did spoil us for almost all other cooking, especially hotel standard issue. Any cooked egg not achieving her exacting standard was fed to the dogs, often immediately, much to the delight of the boys, particularly when the dog’s greed overcame their caution, and they attempted to gulp the egg down while still hot. 

Leisha, the little grey-and-white whippet, would stand spindle-legged, like a giraffe at a water hole, over her egg – first lifting up one half of her top lip and then the other, as she tried to negotiate her mouth around the steaming egg. Shari, the fawn schipperke, would just gulp hers down anyhow, seemingly impervious to its heat, and then stand there, sides often still heaving from her run with the boys outside, staring towards the wall in an apparent reverie, forcing grandma to manoeuvre around her small, solid frame. Sometimes grandma would be forced to place a foot under her belly and gently scoot her out of the way. 

It was always wonderful to wake up in the warmth of the bed, still half in dreamland but nonetheless aware of the clinking of cups and the bustle of activity that went into preparing hot breakfasts for all. Although grandma was economical, even brusque, in her movements about the kitchen, she was not noiseless, and the clatter of utensils had penetrated my sleep, aided and abetted by the smells of bacon in the warmer drawer and porridge bubbling discreetly on the stove top.

Half-awakening, I’d snuggle down in bed, hearing the click of the oven door, the solid, slow movements of Hilda and grandma in the kitchen, then the opening of the kitchen door - first the top half flung open, then the bottom bolt unlatched – as grandpa came in from the farm, vigorously scraping his feet on the foot scraper before entry, then stamping his feet and rubbing his hands together against the morning cold. He always seemed to be wearing the same bulky jersey, one that grandma had knitted him for Christmas many years ago, complete with a blue woollen balaclava in winter when it was “really nippy out there!” 

Grandpa in a bulky jersey, showing my brother a hen, which looks like it is a Potchefstroom Koekoek

Ah, memory, hold-the-door!