Mom’s breakfast still the best
My mom, like your mom, is the best cook in the world.
My mom, likely unlike your mom, cleaned trains for a living.
Growing up, my family was neither rich nor poor — a socio-economic status that was middle class at most. Born in Mumbai, but raised in Burma, my mom immigrated to Southern California in 1979 with my dad and three older siblings for a better life after the military nationalized the government and took away everything they had. To support the family, my mom did lots of random jobs, including a string of admin gigs, flipping fast food burgers at Naugles (the Del Taco predecessor), and cleaning coach trains for Amtrak for 20 years (her longest held job — it had the best benefits).
From kindergarten through elementary, I remember how my mom would make me breakfast every day before she dropped me off at school and rushed off to the train station for work. Breakfast was always eggs prepared one of two ways. Fried anda (anda means egg in Urdu) was a single egg cooked in a healthy amount of browned butter, topped with an excessive amount of freshly cracked black pepper and served with a toasted side of pita bread. Churr anda featured two eggs scrambled into pieces
(churr) with onions, serrano chiles and turmeric; it was also served with a side of toasted pita bread, which I’d split in half to make little egg pockets. Unlike going to school, I actually had a choice in the matters of my daily breakfast.
Whenever I go home to visit SoCal, my mom will still make eggs for me in her same small cast-iron pan, with the same dented and worn, slightly blackened and burned orange-handled tablespoon that she used 25 years ago. These are the eggs of my childhood, and I share with you the recipes.