omelette

There's a story in Iran about a poor man who claimed he had eaten squab and someone asked him if that's why he had the squab's white poop in his beard.  The poor man had been too proud to admit he could only afford to eat yogurt for dinner instead.

While most Iranians eat heavy dinners, I suspect we were in the minority when I was growing up with health-conscious parents.  Late lunches were our big meal of the day with a fancy meat stew my mother would start cooking following breakfast until we got home from school.  Dinner on the other hand was a poor-man's meal: either bread and feta cheese with tomatoes, cucumbers, and walnuts, or we would dip bread in a yogurt, cucumber, and dried mint mix. On nights that we were on the hungrier side, we had an "omelette".  Except the omelette was not prepared like the traditional ones we know in the States.

There were two methods for preparing the omelette stovetop:  either with the eggs whole or scrambled.  What both methods had in common was the same simple ingredients: tomatoes, eggs, salt, pepper, and oil.  After heating oil in the pan, you would saute the diced tomatoes with salt and pepper on medium heat.  When the tomatoes were heated and had released their juices, you would add the eggs one at a time into the tomato juices in the pan.  If you chose the scrambled method, as we did in our family, at this point you would loosely break up the eggs and stir with the tomatoes.   Or leave the eggs whole and let them cook until the desired consistency. Serve with a side of flatbread that can be used to wipe all the delicious last bits off the plate.

When I was 8 years old and had a sleepover at my cousin's house, omelette with whole eggs was served for dinner on a tablecloth spread out on the floor over a Persian carpet.  It was a dry hot summer night and the noise of cars on the street from the open windows in their apartment particularly stood out in contrast to our quiet uptown neighborhood.   I had always seen my uncle's family eat heartier dinners than us so when I returned home the next day, my mother had to explain that perhaps they couldn't afford meat unless they had formal company. My casual visit let them treat me like their own family.  Her explanation of the simple meal made sense to me since we ate at a dining table and slept on beds in our individual rooms at home but my uncle's family of four slept on the floor in the only bedroom of their small apartment.  They did not have any furniture in their place.

It was then that I started noticing not everyone can afford everything they need or want.  We lived modest middle-class lives but I now remember stories from my parents about how much they do not like the Persian lentil-rice dish I so loved.  The first few years of their marriage, when my Dad was starting out as a high school teacher and my Mom who had dropped out of school at 16 to get married to a stranger and within three years give birth to my older siblings by 12 and 10 years respectively, they could not afford meat either.  The way they fed their young family of four was through affordable and protein-rich dishes like lentil-rice.  But these were stories I would hear later in my life.  My parents had worked hard and by the time I was 8, my father retired from teaching to follow his passion in exporting Persian carpets.  By that time we could afford meat on a regular basis in our family.

I left Iran when I was 16 and with it, I left behind everyone but my immediate family.  What I took with me were wonderful memories of time with my relatives.  My cousin who was one of my close friends growing up died at a young age in a tragic accident with her husband and toddler son I never met.  Years later my uncle passed away peacefully in his sleep. To this day, whether I have meat to cook to not,  I still make a hearty tomato omelette on a regular basis and remember that hot summer night in Tehran with all its noise and richness of love I felt from my relatives.  The taste brings back a memory I can never afford to lose and warms my heart as I think back to that night I spent with them.

Normally I would provide a recipe but given the dish's simplicity, I recommend you try your hand at it.  There is no right or wrong proportion to any of the ingredients since you can make it to taste.  Come up with your own personal recipe and create a memory to go with it.  Bon appetit or as we say in Iran, "noosh-e-jan" which literally means "may your soul be nourished"!