Week 4 :: Appetizer (Love/L'Oeuf)

Ever wonder why they call "zero," in the sport of tennis, "love?" Well, zeros tend to look like eggs...and in French, "the egg" translates to "l'oeuf." And then some linguistic magic (mispronunciation) happens, and there you go. The egg becomes love.

But eggs aren't loved in my house. Or mouth.

I really, really, profoundly dislike eggs, and I have since I was a child. A few years ago, it got to a point where I made my mother--who enjoys egg whites with a passion--cook eggs only after I had left the house, because the mere smell of once-potential chicken fetuses sizzling away on a stove made me nauseous. Despite my hatred for them, I think they're fascinating gooey weird things. Baking with eggs is always fun, because you get to perform that slightly daring task of separating eggs, and if you can manage to both crack the egg and separate the whites and yolks singlehandedly, then you're clearly a culinary acrobat and should probably come over to my house to show me how to do that.

What I've realized, though, is that if I am ever to foster love for l'oeuf, I am going to have to be a seriously picky eater. None of this store-bought stuff, no eggs with oddly Technicolor yolks. I know enough about eggs to know that in a really delicious fresh egg, the yolk ought to nearly marigold in colour.

I'm not really brave enough to go to the farmer's market this Wednesday and cook eggs in their myriad forms--hard-boiled, over-easy, scrambled, poached--but I think I actually just may take a look at the Egg chapter in Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home...without gagging.