Egg

Creamy and just a wee bit spicy, this classic dressing is the finishing touch that will make your salad creations irresistible.

We so often think of scrambled eggs served only with bacon or sausage for an everyday breakfast, but they make a fine fancy breakfast or even luncheon dish with baked tomatoes, sautéed potatoes, asparagus tips, and all manner of garnishes. Scrambled eggs are also good cold, as you will see later on, but I don’t think these do well when mixed up with other things. I like them to stand alone and be garnished on the side.

The versatile poached egg! Serve it hot in an artichoke cup, or crowned with béarnaise atop a tenderloin steak, or glittering in aspic, or gracing a curly endive salad, or buried in a soufflé, or dressed as a Benedict, or simply sitting on a warm, crisp, buttery piece of toast for breakfast. It’s a graceful oval, whose white is softly set and whose yolk is thickly liquid. If we could have them fresh from the hen they would literally poach by themselves, since a really fresh egg holds its shape when dropped into simmering water. But most of us have to take certain steps to assure success, using either vinegared water or oval metal egg-poachers (which you can buy in some cookware shops).

The perfect omelet is a gently oval shape of coagulated egg enclosing a tender custard of eggs. It can be a plain breakfast omelet flavored only with salt, pepper, and butter, or it can be a quick main course luncheon omelet filled or garnished with chicken livers, mushrooms, spinach, truffles, smoked salmon, or whatever the cook wishes—an attractive use for nice leftovers, by the way. And you can make an omelet in a number of ways, such as the scrambled technique, the tilt-and-fold method, and so forth. I have always preferred the 2-to-3-egg omelet made by my old French chef teacher’s shake-and-jerk system, as follows. If this is your first attempt, go through the movements of the jerk—and note it is not a toss, it is a straight jerk toward you—and practice the unmolding technique. Serve the whole family for breakfast, so you’ll be making 4 or 5 omelets or more and will get the feel. It’s a very fast lesson, since an omelet takes only about 20 seconds to make.