New York Times Magazine
January 8, 2006
Cooks are by nature creatures of habit, especially when it comes to eating. For the many years that I have been a chef, breakfast has been a cup of coffee early in the morning, which kept me going until around noon. By that point, I was hungry enough to eat cardboard, to which the staff meal often bore an uncanny resemblance. Lunch was usually wolfed down while standing in the dish room or huddled in a stairwell. It was not a glamorous existence. When I was given a temporary reprieve from the daily routines of restaurant kitchens early last year, I decided to try acting like a civilized person and eat a proper breakfast.
At first I made scrambled eggs and toast every morning, but that was before Alexandra, my fiancée, had me throw away our Teflon pan. An environmental lawyer, she cited the lawsuits, fines and nasty press that DuPont has incurred in connection with its non-stick pans. “DuPont claims its cookware is perfectly safe,” she said with the practiced disdain of her profession, “but if the fumes can kill birds when the pans are overheated, then it’s probably not good for us either.” This from a woman whose dinner conversation often swerves into apocalyptic territory, like the high mercury levels in tuna or how perchlorate from rocket fuel has shown up in organic greens in California.
It is very difficult to win a dispute with someone who argues for a living, and I soon found myself trudging off to the recycling area of our apartment building, pan in hand. My breakfast goal of finding something relatively tasty, fast and easy to clean up was temporarily stymied. Attempts at making scrambled eggs in a regular sauté pan led to crusty egg proteins stuck to the cooking surface, no matter how much fat I used. Eggs fried in a cast-iron pan spattered everywhere – not to mention that fried eggs without bacon just didn’t seem right, and nor did bacon as a daily staple. Soft-boiled eggs were far too irritating to peel before coffee, and even the thought of dry, mealy, hard-boiled eggs made me cringe. If I wanted eggs for breakfast, it seemed, I was going to have to poach them.
I started with eggs poached free-form – that is, not in a mold – which I drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with fine sea salt and pepper. The combination of the just-set white and the runny yolk mingling with the oil was pleasurable, but after making them every morning for months, I wanted something more.
Then one day, when Alexandra was away on business, I had an idea for a new way to cook eggs – probably not new to the world, but new to me. It was a little humbling. After more than 20 years of cooking in restaurants, I had clearly failed to master basic egg cookery. I took a moment to ponder this, but then my curiosity got the better of me: what would happen, I wondered, if I beat the eggs before putting them in the water? I expected that they would act much as the intact eggs did and bind quickly, but I did not expect them to set into the lightest, most delicate scrambled eggs imaginable. I became so excited that I immediately reverted to my old ways, eating them standing up in the kitchen.
This method requires a degree of blind faith. After all, pouring cold liquid into hot liquid promises to yield little more than murky yellow water. Following a lot of trial and error, I came to a few basic steps that lead to perfect eggs every time.
The most important factor is using only the thick whites and the yolk. At first I could get this technique to work only with very fresh farmer’s-market eggs, whose viscous whites are high in protein (the main bonding agent). As eggs age, the thick part of the white erodes, and the thin, watery part increases, which is why fresh eggs (less than one week old) are best for eating, and older ones are better suited for meringues. This flummoxed me until a quick e-mail message to my friend Harold McGee, the food scientist and author of “On Food and Cooking,” solved the problem. He discovered that using supermarket eggs is just fine if you start by cracking each one into a slotted spoon (or sieve) and let the thin white drain away, then work with the remaining thick white and yolk.
Next, beat the eggs with a fork, but don’t add salt. (The grains of salt will tear the structure of the eggs, causing them to disintegrate on contact with the water.) Let a covered pot filled with about four inches of water come to a low boil over moderate heat, then remove the cover, add a little salt and stir the water in a clockwise motion. After you’ve created a mini-whirlpool, gently pour the eggs into the moving liquid, which will allow them to set suspended in the water rather than sink to the bottom of the pot, where they would stick.
Have a strainer ready in the sink. It’s helpful to line it with cheesecloth, but I have a hard time strongly advocating something I never do myself. After saying a quick prayer and adding the eggs, cover the pot and count to 20. Almost instantly the eggs will change from translucent to opaque and float to the surface in gossamer ribbons. This all happens very quickly, and by the time you lift the lid, they should be completely cooked.
Tilt the pot over the strainer while holding back the eggs with a spoon, and pour off most of the water. A few bits may escape, but the strainer will catch them. When the rest of the water has drained, gently slide the eggs into the strainer and let them sit there for a minute while you get bowls or remove bread from the toaster. Scoop some eggs into each bowl, season with salt and pepper and drizzle with vibrant green olive oil or melted butter. They’re terrific when lightly dusted with smoked paprika or a flavorful chili powder like piment d’Espelette, and they also clean up nicely for Sunday brunch with a spoonful of crème fraîche and a dollop of caviar.
With just a few months to spare before the opening of my new restaurant, I finally perfected the basics – boiling water and cooking eggs. I hope there’s still time to work on my roast chicken.
