For the Love of Bread

I know. It hurts to even write it. A few health problems and a vow to turn a healthy leaf forced me to give up all processed carbs and starchy food. Nine months ago I said goodbye to crisp, salty steak fries drizzled in malt vinegar, ribbony pasta lapped up with creamy sauces and thick-cut, crusty bread smeared shamelessly with runny brie.

We don't really realize how much of what we eat contains carbs until you try going without them. For the first month I felt perpetually starved, like my stomach was attempting to devour itself from the inside. I craved a bowl of oatmeal, longed for some greasy fried chicken and would have gladly killed for even a boiled spud. After that, the majority of cravings subsided but one remained, and will continue to remain probably until I leave behind a carb-less corpse: bread.

Whenever someone asks me what, as a food lover, my favorite food is, I automatically say: “bread.” “Just bread?” they ask. Well no, but most things in, on or served with bread. My favorite bread pairings include crusty sourdough and gruyere fried in the humble grilled-cheese fashion, a caraway-laden rye with a mile-high stack of corned beef, kraut and swiss, and multi-grain covered in mounds of peanut butter, bananas and clover honey. But my absolute favorite is a thick slice of a boule, covered in butter and dipped mercilessly in runny eggs — the thing I probably miss the most.

Take a moment and think of a conventional breakfast item that does not involve some form of carbohydrate. That's what I thought. You're limited to eggs, fruit and yogurt. Typically I eat two hardboiled eggs and a banana. Every day. At my desk. I spent months absolutely aching for some sunny-side ups and toast, and what's a runny egg without something to dip in the yolk, really? What could I do instead? Drink the yolk with a spoon? Dip broccoli florets in the eggs?

Then it hit me last week like a slap on the face with a loaf of challah (not really). Remember that iconic moment in Eat, Pray, Love —which for me might as well have been called Eat, Something, Something Else — when the protagonist Gilbert plops herself on the floor of her Rome apartment to eat and read the paper and realizes she's mastered the art and joy of just doing nothing? Well forget all of that and try to remember what she was eating. It was none other than eggs and asparagus. How could I have been so blind, so stupid all these months? How could I forget how well asparagus and eggs go together? And I had a bunch of asparagus in the fridge already. This might have been the first moment in my adult life that I attempted a handstand.

The next day I bolted out of bed at 6am and ran to the kitchen. Out of the fridge I snatched eggs, asparagus and butter. I slapped a pan on the stove, melted a generous knob of butter, cooked my eggs and my asparagus and within minutes was watching golden egg yolk curl around emerald spear, each dip making that satisfying stick, stick, stick sound as it reached the more cooked portion of the yolk.

You know what would have made it even better? If it was served with a side of ciabatta. Or focaccia. Or any bread, really.

Ingredients:

1 knob of butter

2 fresh eggs

4 thick spears of asparagus

Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat your butter on a medium flame until it stops sizzling. Meanwhile, crack your eggs carefully in a bowl, making sure not to disturb the yolks.

2. Drop your eggs slowly into your hot pan, making room on one side for your asparagus. This will be easier if your eggs are fresh as the whites won't spread out.

3. Cook until the bottoms of the whites are done.

4. Toss in your asparagus stalks and cover the pan with a fitting lid (glass works great because you can see your eggs cooking).

5. Cook until the yolks are warm and the tops of the whites are cooked. This will only take a minute and will be plenty of time to steam that asparagus.

6. Shred over some parmesan cheese, good salt and fresh cracked pepper.