Crack, plop, sprinkle, whisk, pour. An omelette being made at the street-side parotta kadai is an act done with mechanical precision. The ‘master’, who makes hundreds of parottas a day, can whip up an omelette in less than a minute. It’s fascinating to watch these men at work. They offer variations that, over time, gained reputation and even nomenclature. Curious about the wide variety of street-side eggs available in Chennai, we trawl the city in search of our favourites.
Mix and fix
It was during the early Nineties that parotta master Mansoor Ali made his first kalaki. “I was in Tiruchi then. A customer asked for a gooey omelette and I attempted to offer something unusual. He liked it and I’ve been sticking to this method ever since,” he says. Kalaki looks like a thin omelette folded into a square or triangle. The cushiony, trembling and gooey inside is deliberately left half-done. “It’s an acquired taste,” says Mansoor.
At Spicy Kitchen, a small eatery in Mandaveli where he works, he shows us how a kalaki is made. Mansoor cracks open an egg inside a cup, pours in a spoonful of salna (gravy), sprinkles salt, beats it using a spoon, and tips the mixture onto a searing hot pan. He folds the corners in and flips the quivering mass on to a plate. It’s all over in 45 seconds or so. “This is kolambu (curry) kalaki. It can also be made plain,” he adds. Down South, in places such as Madurai and Virudhunagar, the kalaki is also known as vazhiyal . Mansoor conjectures that the term came to be when customers asked cooks to ‘ vazhichu edu’ (scoop and serve).
Mansoor confesses he is not a big fan of kalaki. “I like the one-side omelette made with onions better.” As the name suggests, this is an omelette cooked only on one side, so that the onions are raw and crunchy.
Beach eggs
No one knows when the bread-omelette tradition of Marina beach began. The carts dot the stretch from the Triumph of Labour statue to the Light House. They serve a variety of sandwiches, from mushroom and paneer to cheese. But authentic Marina bread-omelette has two slices of bread wrapped in a springy omelette; the signature ingredient — mint chutney smeared sparingly on the bread.
Try as you may; you can never achieve the same taste if you attempt it at home. Some say it’s the temperature of the pan; others say it’s the green chutney. But whatever it is, beach omelette is best had at the beach. M. Indhumathy makes one for us one humid evening: she spreads beaten eggs on the pan, places two slices of bread smeared with green chutney on it and folds the paper-thin omelette around them once done. She then cuts it into four spongy squares and hands it to us. It’s delicious.
Podimas
Zuban cannot believe his ears. “Just podimas?” he asks, over trays of chilli cauliflower and noodles at his fast-food kiosk at the Marina beach. He’s disappointed with our choice; what’s fast-food without fiery chicken or deep-fried cauliflower? He sets out to make it, nevertheless.
Ordinary scrambled eggs take on a delicious avatar at these kiosks with ambitious names (There’s one called Buhari and another named The Taj). The high heat and the various masala powders thrown in give the podimas a flavour that seems impossible to replicate in less colourful surroundings.
Masala eggs
These eggs are stacked in stainless-steel bowls, a tempting mass of white and golden brown. Masala eggs or ‘chev’ as P. Karuppiah puts it, are Chennai’s version of Burmese masala eggs. Sold on food carts at Second Line Beach Road at Parry’s, the dish consists of boiled eggs garnished with fried onions and hand-pounded red chillies.
Karuppiah is an expert at Burmese dishes such as atho and mohinga. “I’ve been selling them here for over 30 years,” he says. The masala eggs are served as an accompaniment to the noodles and soup that he makes. “We deep-fry onions and garlic and mix the lot with coarse red-chilli powder,” he explains. Boiled eggs are slit and stuffed with the masala.
There are about seven stalls in the area, each of them selling over 200 eggs during the eight hours they are open. “I sell over seven trays (each holds about 30 eggs) from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. every day,” explains Karuppiah. A piece costs Rs. 10, and it is served with a drizzle of garlic oil and a splash of tangy tamarind water, if needed.
