Egg on toast? And the rest...

If there's one food combination I can't stomach it's eggs with baked beans. Sticky yolk congealing in that gloopy sauce-stuff? No thanks.

Now I'm a great fan of the humble egg (free-range, any style) and I don't mind the occasional factory-farmed bean. Indeed, what better a jacket potato filling?

Well, plenty, since you ask - but that's another story.

Just not baked beans with egg.

Being someone who's always finished what's on her plate (and sometimes other people's) I used to think this egg-with-bean problem was uniquely my own and that admitting it would mark me out as a bit of a picky eater. Which I'm not.

So apart from the odd alcohol-fuelled, late-night confessional over the years, I generally just kept quiet about it. At a push, beans and egg could co-exist on opposite sides of the plate. Just never in the same mouthful. During my student years, when a morning-after all-day breakfast hole was not for the à la carte diner, it was simply a matter of pushing the beans to one side, scoffing the rest, then announcing I had to go to the cashpoint. Plus there was always the dash back for Eastenders omnibus. Beans could be overlooked and thus my secret was safe.

Over the years, however, other egg-beans combo haters* have shamelessly announced their intolerance for all to hear. It's become as common as a nut allergy. There's probably even a book or chat-show about it. So I, too, came out of the egg-beans combo phobia closet and can only say I've never looked back. In fact I'm proud to shout about it loudly in any set-breakfast greasy spoon I slide into. "Eggs AND beans? Together? Get with it, woman, I might drop dead!"

So here we are in 2007 and I'm in Auckland. Yesterday morning I took a walk over to Season, a smart café on Ponsonby Road, which I've heard is the place to eat Baghdad Eggs.

I've made a version of Baghdad Eggs a few times, from Stephanie Alexander's cookbook. I don't have it to hand, but if memory serves correctly, you squeeze lemon juice onto the eggs while they're frying so the whites take on a citrussy tang, then sprinkle over ground spices and chopped mint. Sometimes they're called Turkish Eggs.

At Season, Baghdad Eggs is three fried eggs on a thick crusty slice of fried bread. But of course that's not all. A Sunday-morning student could just about manage that. What Season's head-chef Cameron Lawless does with his Baghdad eggs is this:

While the eggs are still cooking, in goes some squashed tomatoes and whole cloves of roasted garlic, so that the tomatoes creep into the whites just a little. Eggs and tomatoes are then flipped onto the fried bread, then topped with cumin-spiced lentils, a dollop of chilli tomato chutney and stacks of fresh mint and coriander.

Eggs, three; beans, nil. Lots of other exciting stuff going on, bucket-loads. The whole thing's an explosion of flavours with a satisfying crunch from beneath that makes you wish it would last twice as long as it does.

The waitress tells me the dish is "chef's pride and joy". And you can see why. Keep your beans - I'm going back for my next one tomorrow.


* you know who you are