What can I say about eggs. I think there’s nothing quite as emancipating as eggs, because when there’s no food in the kitchen, there’s egg. If you want to prepare a good meal in less than five minutes, there is egg. Whether you want the meal to be Western or Desi, there’s an egg.
Egg is the most versatile and whimsical food you will ever know. An egg can mutate with the application of heat, ingredients and imagination into delicious shapes, forms and flavors that possibly no other food can.
In a few seconds it turns into a sunny fried egg on a pan with butter; in a few more minutes, eggs can be petrified into a creamy scrambled egg with a little milk and gentle heat; when cooked in their full form, eggs become big balls of goodness; and when whipped and fried, eggs can become a pancake like an omelette or frittatas; and if you keep stirring the eggs before they settle into an omelet, you’ll get one bhurji and much much more.
The eggs I grew up eating, during my days of struggle, were the good old desi bhurji. Don’t get me wrong when I say ‘my days of struggle’, I just struggled to get through college. And Ramesh’s Canteen at the Sir JJ School of Art, where I spent five years of my life, made the best and a bhurji I ate once.
I just love the idea of being able to crack a few eggs and turn it into a wholesome Indian flavored complete dish. Assured with spices, fried onions, green peppers, on the and a bhurji, if you also add ginger-garlic… my, my! It’s the best thing you could ever eat with bread, chapathitoast, paratha.
In my little experience, I’d argue that no matter how bad your cooking, there’s little you can do to make a simple and a bhurji. It is the simplest and tastiest meal that you can conjure up in a few minutes. All it takes is a chopped onion, green chillies and some seasoned tossed in oil and a few eggs broken into the mixture.
The only problem if you eat one bhurji on the street is that they often use too much oil and cook the eggs very quickly and hard, hence the bhurji becomes a bit like a very oily shredded omelette instead of a seasoned scrambled egg. What you do need is a little artful patience.
Of course, if you decide to apply some art to the and a bhurjia little persistence and finer ingredients will make you a Parsi style akuri.
Now, please don’t confuse the two. Just because both eggs beat together with onion and spices doesn’t matter akuri And bhurji synonym. In my short life on earth I have eaten a number of varieties of Parsi auris. I just call them the ‘yellow and green’ akuri‘ and the ‘brown akuri‘. Both are made by beating eggs over a very slow heat until soft, creamy and slightly sticky.
In the ‘yellow and green akuri‘, eggs are scrambled with fried onion and spiced with turmeric, green chillies and an extravagance of finely chopped coriander. While in what I call it ‘brown’ akuri‘, eggs are slowly stirred, with golden fried onion, green chillies, sometimes finely chopped tomatoes, and seasoned with ginger garlic, red chilli powder, dhania jeera powder, and if you feel like it, even some dhansak masala. The result is a golden brown, wonderfully syrupy, custard-like dish that is a meal in itself.
So popular is the idea of enlivening eggs into a kind of spiced non-vegetarian sabzi, which the bhurji takes on different forms, is also a few other parts of the country. For example the ande ka khagina from Hyderabad. It’s pretty much one bhurji but with Hyderabad’s own flavors and personality. Here you thinly slice and fry onions, add coriander, salt, turmeric powder, chilli, tomatoes and water to make a gravy. Once the gravy is ready, beaten eggs are added to the gravy and mixed until soft and thick. It is very tasty with hot chapathisnaan or parathas.
Then there is the Tamilian muttai poriyal. It is the South Indian version of the bhurji. The tadka is typically South Indian with mustard seed and cumin, gram dal and urad dal, chopped chillies, chopped onions and curry leaves and turmeric powder. Add the beaten eggs and start mixing until you are happy with the consistency. Some houses make the muttai poriyal with grated radish, and hot mullangi muttai poriyalor pear kangai muttai poriyal with ridge pumpkin.
Once you’ve mastered the basics and a bhurji, you can decide to add anything to these spicy scrambled eggs. You can add cooked minced meat and one kheema ghotalaor cooked goat brain and make one bheja bhurji. You can add old shredded rotis and make one kutu parathaor you can add last night’s rice and make one of South India’s favorite street dishes, rotten kadai or egg rice.
If you don’t like eggs, you can bhurji with paneer, soy or even chickpeas, but then you just wasted your time reading my column. So and zindabadand three cheers for the bhurji.
The most beautiful thing about the and a bhurji is that the recipe is limited only by your imagination.
Kunal Vijayakar is a food writer from Mumbai. He tweets @kunalvijayakar and can be followed on Instagram @kunalvijayakar. His YouTube channel is called Khaane Mein Kya Hai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of this publication.