Eggs in Purgatory

Stuart McWhinney

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Heath woke up to bad news. He had received an email from Alessandro informing him that a dear friend had passed away overnight. Kelly had also been a chef — a great one — and the world would be poorer without him.

Heath slumped his shoulders and let out a heavy sigh. His world had shrunk ever smaller.

“Come on, Kenji.” Heath called his grandson as the six-year-old battled with his rain boots. Last night’s rainfall had left the smell of mud in the air, which now mingled with wet hay from the coop. Heath led Kenji to the gate and let him into the fenced chicken strut. Kenji playfully chased the fowl and jumped in the mud while Heath inspected the hutch to make sure it was still keeping his flock dry and warm.

“Over here.”

Kenji ran around to his grandfather’s side where he was opening the side panels, exposing the nests inside.

“Do you remember how I showed you yesterday?” Kenji shook his head, and Heath proceeded to demonstrate with his favourite chicken, Gorgonzola. He pet his way around the barnevelder's iridescent plumage. As his hand reached the underside, Gorgonzola stood to yield her clutch of chocolate-coloured eggs. Heath passed them one-by-one to Kenji, who received them with both hands and carefully placed them into a waiting basket.

“Okay, now you.”

With his grandfather’s guidance, the six-year-old proceeded to replicate his grandfather’s method with the hen on the lower row. Mrs. Potts, in Heath’s opinion, had a perfect temperament for children; aptly, she had been named by Kenji. The black-and-white wyandotte recognised the boy’s touch and stood to allow the child to triumphantly claim a single brown egg. Kenji placed it with the others.

“Nice job, buddy.” Kenji squeezed his eyes shut as he grinned. “Go on and see if they’ve left any around the place.” The boy skipped off, kicking up mud and hay.

Inside, Josh was waiting, brewing a cup of coffee while setting up a baby monitor. Heath placed the basket next to him on the counter. 

“You still drink coffee?’ Heath said, half in jest, half surprised.

“Beverages still exist, Dad; food still exists. It’s just a niche market now.”

“And will you be eating this morning? I'm making Eggs in Purgatory.”

Josh considered the offer, but consulting his watch, turned it down. “Little Emmaline has an appointment. She’s got some blood tests to determine if she needs a special nutrient blend or can start to be weaned onto a regular toddler paste.”

When Josh was young, the doctor had recommended the then-revolutionary nutrient pastes to combat the difficulties he was having absorbing certain minerals. In the following years, the market exploded with a new generation of meal replacements targeting time-starved parents and office workers, then dieters and bodybuilding enthusiasts modelled on research with athletes over years prior.

“I hope she doesn't have to go through all that you did. Do you need me to watch Kenji?”

“Nah, he needs to practice patience. I told him we can go to the park if he can sit through the whole doctor’s visit.”

From outside they heard Kenji yelling, “Grandpa! I’ve found another one!”

The boy came running in, cupping a pale-brown egg, and theorising as to why it had been secreted away. Heath laughed and offered the boy Eggs in Purgatory. Kenji shook his head emphatically, “Eww, that’s plants and animals. Nobody eats that stuff except for you, Grandpa.”

“People have been eating plants and animals for centuries, Kenji. We didn’t have that fancy paste when I was a boy, you know.”

“Na-uh, that’s gross. People don’t—” Kenji started but Josh cut his son off, chiding him for being rude about someone else’s culture. Sheepishly, Kenji apologised. Heath accepted his apology and the boy skipped off to play with the chickens again.

“Off to the restaurant this evening?” Josh asked, “How’s your customer base?”

“The older ones are shuffling off into the great wild yonder, but a new customer does step in every few months.”

Heath’s restaurant was a deep, rectangular space. The kitchen ran two-thirds the length of the side wall. It was enclosed by an L-shaped counter designed to encourage interaction with the activities of the kitchen from any of the three distinct customer spaces; the group tables in the wider entrance space, the single-patron bar against the long counter, and the lounge behind for non-dining customers.

The summer-twilight outside was slowly fading. Heath’s usual early-birds had moved from the dining area to the lounge to chat while their food digested. The chimes on the door clattered. A young couple moved inside and they both nervously surveyed the boutique.

“A table for two?” Heath offered courteously as he gestured towards one of the group tables against the bar. The two obliged and sat. “How can I help you?”

The man shifted in his seat. “It’s Samantha’s birthday,” he gestured to his company, “and we read online that trying an old ‘dining experience’ would be an interesting way to celebrate. The thing is, neither of us have had food like this since we were kids.”

Heath offered his name with a warm smile, and promised his assistance in giving them an authentic dinner-date; one like many evenings of his youth. Heath produced two menus and introduced the couple to a bottle of wine. He told Samantha and her date, Edward, to pick out any item from the menu with foods or flavours they recognised.

The couple were left to chat and laugh over their menus while Heath prepared a cooking station a little further than he normally would from his customers. Samantha and Edward called him over to ask about the dishes. “Normally, I don’t hand out a menu because — you see my regulars in the lounge? They grew up with food. I don’t think any of us have actually tried the paste. I prepare for them a meeting of what I know they like and what I have on hand from my sources.

“That wine,” Heath pointed, “the owner is downstate. Alessandro brought the vine of his ancestor’s out from Italy and is about to pass the vineyard down to his daughter.”

The couple took turns looking over the wine bottle while the other told Heath which menu items stirred any memories. He set about preparing them fresh Indian bread to start while engaging with their enquiries about the culture of his restaurant.

“So, do you always just cook for your customers without giving them a choice?” Samantha asked.

“I do have the menu,” he had a twinkle in his eye, “but, choice can be overrated.”

Heath stretched a lump of dough and lay it over a hot pan, flipping it once before serving it to them. The naan was soft to Samantha’s probing finger and steam wafted gently from the surface. Edward refilled each of their glasses and set the bottle down. He reached out and gingerly pulled the bread apart. The savoury aroma intensified.

Heath continued, “I don’t get much patronage outside of my regulars. You two are the first fresh faces I’ve had this year.” The couple exchanged nonplussed expressions. “But once I get to know their palates, they know I’ll give them a delectable experience that they otherwise might never have known.”

 In his experience, the almost-universal skills of his youth had atrophied to an obscurity in modern day. Before the couple started eating, Heath explained the origin and use of the different utensils. He started with the spoon, then knife and fork, and finally a pair of chopsticks.

He left them to explore their grip on the utensils. From the door of his storage room, he noticed that Samantha and Edward had made a game out of ripping up little pieces of the naan and trying to feed the other with their new skills.

As their evening progressed, the couple’s interest in his antique skill grew. Eventually, they encouraged Heath to move his workspace closer, wanting to enhance their immersion. Their growing interest coaxed a warm glow of pride from within Heath.

“I love this texture!” Edward exclaimed after taking a spoonful of Heath’s creme brulee.

The couple finished the evening delighted with their experience. Heath cleared away their table, leaving them to savour and reflect over a cup of coffee.

“In my younger years, this would be the point when the waiter would bring the bill, but I don’t price things here. Instead I would like to wish you, Samantha, a happy birthday.” Heath took off his chef’s hat to hold it gently in hand. “And to the both of you, I hope you enjoyed this window into a historical art.”

Edward insisted on paying for the meal, but Heath wouldn’t hear of it. The couple’s profuse thanks abated only when they sidled out of the restaurant.

That warm glow of pride was in full bloom; a small part of him felt that they now held some significance of his culture. These hopes were suddenly dashed when the last thing Heath heard before the automatic door slid shut was the couple laughing about their archaic evening.

“So you just let them dine without paying?” Heath had finished the anecdote on that fact. Josh was incredulous.

“My regulars are generous patrons.” Heath added basil to the pan and placed it into the oven.

“So your profits are good?”

Heath laughed. “I profited two new regulars last year.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Josh pressed, but now it was Heath’s turn to chide his own son.

“I didn’t raise you to think that way; it must have been your mother. She always put the bottomline before a more nuanced definition of value.”

“Well how do you manage to stay open?”

“How can I help you today, sir?”

“I’m here to file my tax return for business income.”

The young lady waved him into the seat across the table from her. They exchanged pleasantries, and necessary information while she shuffled for the appropriate forms. It took the woman only a few moments to go through Heath’s meticulous accounting records before gawking at the implications.

“Sir, your take-home income is concerning. Do you have another line of income? Support from family?”

“I have enough. You could stop by my restaurant later tonight to see, if you wish.”

“Oh, no thank you.” The woman seemed uncomfortable. “I’m a prokarytarian; I don’t eat plant or animal products.”

Heath covered his reactionary twinge of melancholy with a polite acknowledgement of her choice.

They had almost completed the form when she took a small silver pouch from behind the desk. Green letters across the pouch denoted it as one of the products aimed at sedentary office workers.

“Ma’am, couldn’t you eat that on your lunch break?”

She was taken aback. “What’s a lunch break?”

“Can you believe it?” Heath’s eggs were out of the oven and he was picking at it with a wooden spoon. “You’ve still got a lunch break, right?”

Josh grimaced. “Actually, I was just offered a pay-rise last week in exchange for my lunch break.”

Heath balked. His son detailed the deliberation. Eventually, the decision came down to the overall bump in pay against that time spent in the gym and showers. “I wasn’t eating at work. That’s what got me into the culture pastes to begin with. Food prep always took so much time away from doing the things I needed or wanted to do.” Josh sighed. “At some point, life just gets too busy for that interruption. Now I go weeks without experiencing hunger, and I honestly don't miss eating; it never goes anywhere, you never get any better at it. You always get hungry again. You always need to wash dishes again. You always have to plan, buy, and prep more food.”

Heath scowled. “Cooking isn’t about satisfying hunger. There is an experience to be had in all the sensations of preparing and consuming food. Twelve thousand years of evolution, through every generation of feast and famine. And maybe very few people have the time to prepare food like I do, but the art of cooking shouldn’t go extinct for the sake of convenience.”

“But Dad, it’s environmental factors, too. Do you remember how big the cheer was for test tube steak? Vegetarianism was a huge movement, but then viable parkland and habitat creation was still taken up by farmland. Now, we get all the nutrients we could need by feeding programmed microbes half as much plant matter to support twice the population, all because of nutrient specificity.

“Sheila told me fruit and vegetables were so expensive growing up in her hometown; economics used to breed inequality of health and nutrition. But now, being able to make healthful choices is not just a middle class privilege.”

It had been the great global revolution of his lifetime, but despite the cost Heath couldn’t stand to give up his culture. “Are we just supposed to turn our back on the long history of cuisine?”

“Humans had a long history of illiteracy before education. And what about generations of factory farming?” Josh countered. “We can’t keep wearing the shackles of nature just because we found a way to enjoy it for any length of history.”

The dissonance within Heath was interfering with his appetite. It must have shown because Josh eased up with an apology. “This has been your life, and I can’t imagine anyone in the world whom this affects more. I don’t think the knowledge you have should be lost. Maybe you should organise a meet-up to teach or share recipes.”

“What’s a recipe?” Kenji chimed at the flywire.

Josh explained what a recipe was while Heath — unable to finish his eggs — went to help Kenji with his boots so that he wouldn’t track mud through the cottage. Josh looked at his watch and told Kenji to grab his backpack. The elder generations found Kenji’s tablet and pen, dice, and balls, placing them in the backpack produced by Kenji.

There was a splat followed by coughing.

“What happened?” Josh and Heath slid into the room to find Kenji doubled over a wooden spoon surrounded by yolk and tomato.

“It’s spicy and …” Kenji took a deep breath, trying to find the right work, “a-an-and sticky and juicy.”

The parents sighed and laughed. Heath bent down to clean up the floor. “That’s okay, bud. I’ll clean this up in a moment because you guys have gotta get going.”

Heath lifted his grandson into the car. As it drove itself up the driveway, Josh called out, “I’ll buzz you later. Just give me some time to think about how to apply your skills in a post-culinary world.”

Heath just stood there as the car pulled out onto the suburban street, watching the dust settle.

Josh’s last words rang in his ears all the way back inside. On the kitchen counter, by his uneaten eggs, there was a note being weighed down by a small silver pouch. It simply read, “find the middle ground” in Josh’s tidy scrawl.

After cleaning the floor, Heath spent the rest of the day in asynchronous contact with Alessandro. At some point, Alessandro mentioned that a ‘prestigious Member of the Paste’ would be at Kelly’s funeral to pay their respects.

They swapped stories about Kelly and made the usual promises to treasure their own time so that when their turn came, in some way, their respective legacies would be preserved. However, Josh’s words peppered Heath’s thoughts, and he was less confident about the legacy he would leave.

Heath had been in and out of the kitchen throughout the day, but he hadn’t touched his eggs or the pouch. Long shadows crept out to accompany him as he fed his flock. On his way back inside though, the heavy gaze of the untidied food finally halted him.

His hand reached for and lifted the pouch. It turned over and over under his gaze as, for the first time in his life, Heath truly looked at the packaging. The sleek design reinforced a tagline printed below the brand name. It read “keeping you fulfilled while you pursue what you love”.

He cracked the seal. No smell escaped from the hollow, plastic opening. It inched hesitantly towards Heath's mouth. With a small amount of pressure, the gel disgorged from the small opening across his tongue. He lingered on the moment of degustation.

This definitely needs cardamon, Heath thought.

He casted some music through the kitchen speaker and brought the room to life. The contents of the pouch were spilled by a blade through its belly onto a wooden cutting board. Heath ran the flat of his blade over the gel repeatedly, homogenising the lumps into a thin sheet of pale white. He deftly divided the paste into twelve separate ramekins.

At that moment, the phone rang and was projected to the speaker.

“Hey, Dad,” As Josh had promised, “I’ve been thinking, and have you considered streaming your restaurant on the internet to generate interest?”

“Food isn’t really a spectator sport, Son. But, uhh...” Heath’s hesitation interrupted his work with the mortar and pestle. “I’ve actually got something at the moment. Have you got any time later this week to swing by? It won’t take long.”

Josh said he would make time in the following days. The call disconnected and Heath continued with new vigour.

Into each ramekin he measured out varying mixtures of spices. He inspected the packet carefully for its heat-sensitivity, then moved his workstation to the stove. Over gently boiling water, one-by-one he steamed and stirred the ramekins to activate the spices. All the while, he kept a careful eye on the thermometer. 

“Try these,” Heath took the ramekins from the fridge and set them out before Josh, who eyed them suspiciously.

“What did you do?” Josh took the small spoon being presented to him, and pulled a trench through the gel, which was now tinted and speckled with earthy colours.

“I’m going to apply for a job.” Heath’s declaration gave Josh pause before the spoon had made it to his mouth.

“What job is that?”

“I don’t know. It’s not open yet—”

“Woah,” Josh interrupted. “I didn’t know these could taste so good.”

“You always did have a sharp sense of taste,” Heath lamented. He gestured for him to try one of the other preparations. “But judging by the original taste of those pastes,” He continued with a twinkle in his eye, “someone isn’t doing the job.”