Except for her delicious parsley-and-onion eggs, my mother usually favored a plain omelet. Nothing but beaten eggs cooked in butter until slightly brown, then flipped and cooked some more until mottled on the other side.
Clearly, this was a culinary failure by the standards of today's celebrity chefs, who seem to like their omelets as soft and soupy as chowder.
But here's the real twist: Mom always topped her plain omelet with a generous sprinkle of sugar. She said that's how her mother ate eggs, so it was obviously a Dikranagerdsi thing.
I have no idea how her Kharpertsi father ate eggs, or if he ate eggs at all. But my father, who was born in Dikranagerd, like his eggs over medium -- and he said his father ate them with hot peppers.
So, who knows?
I do know that Mom and her Dikranagerdsi aunts also put sugar on cheese borags and ate them as dessert.
Does any of this ring a bell?
I wonder if any other Armenians like to sweeten their eggs or any other dishes that most leave savory?
My mother's family liked to serve their plain omelet over garlic yogurt in the summer. Supposed to be very refreshing. No sugar, though.
ReplyDeleteSugar on eggs is a favorite of Musa Daghtsis, too. Cookbook author, Jack Hachigian, provided a recipe for "Ajik", a dessert omelet favored by folks of that region: http://www.thearmeniankitchen.com/2009/04/were-all-connected-to-musa-dagh.html
ReplyDeleteSugar sounds good to me. I want to try it.
ReplyDeleteTraditional Dikranagerdtsi method of eating sweet eggs is to fry them in grape molasses or dips (from Arabic). The name is Dipsov Dabag.
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