The Magic of Mom’s Cooking – My Son’s Favourite Recipe

We all get nostalgic about the food our mother and grandmothers cooked for us. Don’t we? It takes us back to simple, innocent & carefree days of our childhood. The simple dal-chawal (rice & dal) we ate on sick days, the tasty school lunch or a special recipe made on our birthday or festive occasions. Mom’s cooking was indeed the best. Never did I imagine that I, with average cooking skills at best, especially when it came to Indian cuisine, could some day qualify for another tiny’s ‘favourite cook’ title. And that too win the title of world’s best egg curry.

I came to the realization that all moms have magic in their hands when my son proclaimed his love for the egg curry I make. He began requesting for the Egg Curry. He even proclaimed that if he ever went to MasterChef (Australia version, of course) he would cook up my egg curry . Complete with a back story on his childhood when I cooked it for him. That’s also when I began reminiscing and truly thinking if it was something special that was added to my mom’s recipes or just the fact that she hand made them. The magic ingredient being love!

So today’s post is dedicated to the ‘world’s best egg curry’ 

I have of course ran various permutations and combinations on this recipe and then arrived at a perfect egg curry. For our family of course. So here goes –

Image by jcomp on Freepik

The World’s Best Egg Curry by MommyT

You will need these ingredients –

• 6 Eggs (or more if you like, 6 works for our family of 3)
• 2 large onions
• 1 large tomato
• 1 inch piece of ginger
• 5 to 6 garlic cloves
• 1 small bunch of coriander leaves finely chopped
• 1 sprig of curry leaves (kadipatta)
• Whole spices – Cinnamon stick about 2 inches long, 1 bay leaf, 8 to 10 pepper corns, 2 green cardamoms (elaichi)
• for tempering – 2 tsp mustard seeds
• Powdered spices – 1 tsp turmeric powder, 2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder (you can use spicier versions of chilli powder depending on your tolerance), 1.5 tsp coriander powder, 0.5 spoons of cumin powder, and the star ingredient – 2 tsp of pav bhaji masala powder
• 400 ml (2 small tetra packs) of Coconut milk (I use Dabur’s)
• salt to taste
• 3 tbsp edible cooking oil (coconut oil works well for this South Indian’ish curry, but your regular oil will do.)
• If you love Potatoes in curry you can also add a small to medium potato, chopped up into chunks
• if you like it spicy – slit green chillies as many as your taste buds allow
• For garnish – thin juliennes of ginger

Let’s get cooking – The Mise en Place (pre-cooking preparation)

Finely chop the onion and the ginger and garlic. You can chop them either by hand or use an electric chopper, which I use. I add the onions chopped in half, along with the peeled ginger & garlic into the chopper. This also mixes the 3 ingredients together quite well. Separately chop up the tomatoes, coriander leaves too.

Gather the powdered spices in a small bowl. All together is fine as you will add them all in one go into the cooking pot.

Put up a small pot of water to the boil to which has been added salt and 1 tsp of oil. This helps peel the shells off later. When the water is up to a boil, add the eggs in and cook for about 10 minutes. Hard boiled eggs work well in this recipe as we will cut the eggs in half when adding into the gravy. Transfer the eggs into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process once time’s up. Peel and leave them aside.

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The key to a great curry – the bhuna (roast masala)

Now we start making the curry base for the world’s best egg curry.

Heat the chosen oil in a medium to large non-stick wok or sauce pan. Once the oil has heated up without getting to smoking, add in the whole spices (bay leaf, cinnamon stick, pepper corns & cardamoms) and let them sputter for a bit on the smallest flame. Once done then add in the mustard seeds and curry leaves & allow them to toast & sputter. Then add in the chopped onion, garlic and ginger all in one go. Now you begin frying the onions on medium high till they go from opaque to a translucent to a caramel brown.

This process may take around 10 to 15 minutes or sometimes more depending on the intensity of the heat on your gas and your stirring skills. Keep stirring every 30 seconds to 1 minute so that the onions caramelize well without burning. If you feel they are burning, continue to rapidly stir while adding about 2 to 3 tablespoons of plain water. This works to lower the heat quickly and also melt the caramel colour into the onion base. If you are adding potatoes add them at this stage along with half a cup of water and cover and cook till the potatoes are firm but cooked.

The onions will be ready when its all coagulated into a mass and oil leaves the sides of the onions into the pan. This is when I add in all the powdered spices listed above on the smallest flame, so as not to burn them. Mix them in well so that they get well coated in the oil and are roasted.

Next add in the chopped tomatoes, remembering to turn the heat back up on medium. Stir them in well until they are soft and a little mushy. Then you add in the coconut milk. We use about 400 ml of milk to make a runny gravy to go with rice or rotis. If you want a slightly thick curry, use about half of the quantity. Bring this up to a gentle boil and then add in the sliced egg halves, covering the tops with gravy. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes before turning the heat off.

And that folks is babyT’s world’s best egg curry made by his mom. 🙂

Garnish with chopped coriander leaves and ginger juliennes while serving.

This egg curry actually goes great with roti/chapati/fulkas or with kerala parotha or wheat laccha parathas or even dosa, needless to mention plain ol’rice. We have also tried this with toasted sour dough bread and its worked so well.

What’s your world’s best dish cooked by mom? Hit me up with a link in the comments and I’d love to try it out.

This post is part of the #BlogchatterFoodFest by Blogchatter.