Egg

Deviled eggs are a classic that doesn’t need to be reinvented with all sorts of fancy ingredients. When it comes to making hard-boiled eggs, the biggest problem is easily overcooking them, which produces a nasty green ring around the yolk and a rubbery texture. The explanation for boiling eggs may seem like overkill, but trust me, you will have total success for the rest of your life.

I ate this magical meal at Girl Scout camp and then thought about it for the next thirty-odd years until we went camping in the mountains near Joe’s. It’s a full breakfast in a paper bag, easy to make if you already have a campfire burning (or hot embers in a charcoal grill or fireplace), portable, and delicious. As the bacon in the bottom of the paper bag renders and becomes crispy-chewy, the fat protects the paper from burning and gently steams the egg. This cannot be prepared in advance: after the eggs are cracked, the bags should be dangling over the hot coals within a minute. If your mess hall prefers scrambled eggs, they work well, too.

The potato salad is delicious on its own, and so is the omelet. Together? Divine.

Try this versatile omelet with traditional ingredients such as bean sprouts or water chestnuts, or look in your vegetable crisper and use that lonely stalk of celery or leftover carrot half, a handful of mushrooms or snow peas, some broccoli florets, etc. Try for a variety of colors and use up to 2 cups of chopped vegetables.

Fast, easy, warm, and inviting, this dish will quickly become a favorite part of your simple supper repertoire.

In this delicious omelet, we borrowed the taste of garlic, caraway, and coriander from harissa, the classic Tunisian seasoning. The omelet can also be cut into wedges and served as an appetizer or as part of a tapas or antipasto platter.

This might be just the ticket when you’re looking for something tasty and really fast.

If you love spinach and feta, this simple supper is for you.

One of our favorite home-style dishes at Hong Kong Restaurant in Ithaca’s Collegetown, this is the Chinese version of scrambled eggs and ketchup!

Serve this right out of the pan for a quick home-style meal. Warm, at room temperature, or straight from the fridge, this omelet also makes a great sandwich with mayonnaise and tomato. (See photo)

We created this for the opening of our Las Vegas store, knowing that it would be the perfect sandwich to have after a night of Vegas-style fun. The richness of both the steak and the eggs is balanced by the acidity and savoriness of the vinaigrette used to season the mushrooms.

The Italian version of an omelet, in which the whisked eggs and the other ingredients go into a large pan at the same time, a frittata can be eaten warm or cold. Almost any kind of vegetable works well in a frittata. We love the sweetness and flavor of leeks and roasted onions. The original sandwich at ’wichcraft contained only the frittata and good, aged Cheddar cheese. Ben Bohen, a long-time collaborator, would have this sandwich as his regular breakfast—except that Ben would always add roasted tomato. He encouraged the staff to try it, and he encouraged the customers to try it, until eventually he converted us all and we put it on the menu forevermore with Ben’s roasted tomatoes.

Most of us have had the classic egg-and-bacon sandwich. When conceiving of our own, we were inspired by the French salad of frisée au lardons, in which the bacon lardons are rendered and warmed up, gorgonzola is used for the dressing, and the frisée is tossed into the mix, becoming warm and wilted. Here, we have essentially married the salad and the classic sandwich, and the resulting ’wich illustrates that, by just doing a little more, you can take a standard sandwich to a higher realm. If you are preparing this recipe for a large number of people, you can fry the eggs and set them aside on parchment paper on a tray, popping them in the oven to heat them just a bit when you’re ready to assemble the sandwiches. This sandwich would be great made with poached eggs, as well.

The literal translation of torta di pasta is “cake made of pasta.” What I particularly love about this recipe is that it makes for great finger food: All the ingredients bind together and can be cut up into easy little servings, and it can be served at room temperature. You probably won’t want to tell your guests that you’re serving them leftovers, and they’ll never know the difference.

When asparagus is in season in springtime, use it to capture the flavors of the garden with a minimal amount of effort. It cooks quickly by any method—steaming, boiling, grilling, or sautéing, as here—and it’s very easy to prepare. To trim asparagus of its woody stem end, simply hold one end of the spear in one hand, the other end in the other hand, and bend gently until the spear snaps—which it will do exactly where the stem starts to get woody. Asparagus has its own built-in sous chef.

It’s very European to use potatoes in omelets, tarts, and frittatas—even on pizzas. The key is to use small cubes of potato, as here, or very thin slices. You don’t want to be biting into a whole mouthful of starch, and you want your potatoes to cook through in a reasonable amount of time.