Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
Believe it or not, the humble boiled egg, is the one food that truly transports me back.
When we were kids, there were chickens and geese in our backyard. My dad used to feed them on commercially available feeds, but Mum used to give them all the veggie scraps from the kitchen. Stuff like potato and carrot peelings, trimmings from home grown leeks and the leaves from cabbages and cauliflower.
It’s hard to describe the flavour. The yolk always had a rich taste. Something that your typical supermarket factory produced eggs fails to match. As soon as you crack the shell, lift the lid. You can tell the egg is not going to meet expectations. The colour of the yolk is a dead give away. My childhood eggs all had a rich golden yolk. Today’s supermarket offering tends to be a pale yellow.
Obviously, the birds diet has a lot to do with how the eggs look and taste.
When was the last time that childhood memory was triggered ?
We were on our way down to Central France and had stopped at a B&B. They had chooks roaming around their orchard. The eggs served for breakfast, supplied by those hens, were simply delicious.
WrAnTz 