I find preparing any kind of food – from the evening meal to a nice creme brulee – to be a great way to relax and a way to enjoy some creativity.
However, when I discovered last year that I have developed an intolerance to eggs, my culinary world almost came to an end.
I quickly discovered the humble egg finds its way into almost every single dish – and condiment, come to think about it.
Be it a bread roll, quiche or sponge cake, the egg is there, listed like a taunt in the ingredients list of so many recipes.
Only when I started looking at my favourite dishes did I realise how many of them contain eggs.
In fact I was recently given a cookbook with over 150 recipes in it and only four were egg free – that’s less than three per cent of the recipes.
My problem escalated last week when my father found one of those nifty blowtorches, which he thought I simply had to have.
Now call me sugar-minded but the first thing that came to mind was to try my new toy on a creamy creme brulee.
I soon discovered that not only is egg an ingredient, it is essential to the process.
As with other dishes I quickly hopped onto Google to find an egg free alternative and, as with every other dish, discovered the search words ‘egg free’, ‘eggless’ and ‘without egg’ rendered a slew of recipes … all containing eggs.
It seems the idea of recipes without eggs is so preposterous that Google refuses to entertain the notion.
This is where I lose my sense of humour.
For every allergy there is a replacement ingredient but Google simply refuses to allow for people who don’t eat eggs, especially if you’re happy to include dairy.
Now if you’re vegan there are hundreds of alternate recipes – it’s just the non egg eaters who have to suffer (if pushed, however, I might admit it isn’t only those opposed to eggs but in my world we are the only ones persecuted to this magnitude).
However, after much gnashing of teeth and tons of perseverance I did eventually find an egg-free creme brulee which turned out wonderfully – if a little sweet.
So now, dear reader, I am on the hunt for delicious eggless recipes and will share these with you in my monthly blog “Chicken, no Eggs” starting on Saturday.
If you have a great recipe for egg-free living, feel free to share these with me at samk@caxton.co.za and I’ll include them on my blog which will be found in the blog section on www.springsadvertiser.co.za
