Hard-Boiled Eggs – Perfection!

I read something interesting in the Times the other day. And it wasn’t that the Knicks got killed again. Alinea, the restaurant in Chicago famous for its elaborate presentation, molecular wizardry, and an $800, 21 course meal for two, received three Michelin stars.

It’s one of those places where the chefs use tweezers to arrange your food on the plate: a tiny square of sous vide pineapple here, a sprig of candied bay leaf there, adjacent to a curling slice of compressed pheasant.

At Alinea, said pheasant is served alongside a pile of burning leaves, meant to conjure the aromas and sensations of fall. I don’t know what they do about the guy at the next table eating scallops: maybe a waiter drizzles seawater over his head. But I don’t think that’s on the menu…yet.

To me this seems a lot of nonsense, a misguided striving for a warped concept of perfection.

To read Thomas Keller’s cookbooks (the Alinea chef is a protégé) is to enter the mind of a chef obsessed with perfection. The photographs are inhumanly beautiful. A recipe for “Chestnut-stuffed Four Story Hills Farm Chicken with Celery and Honey-Poached Cranberries” accompanies a brilliant photo: two shellacked cherries perch on a white plate, dotted with three glistening cranberries, two celery slices, and two off-center cuts of meat each studded with a chestnut. Three tiny microgreens lean langorously about the arrangement. Each product on the plate is, supposedly cooked as nature intended, and Keller is there to guide us.

I’m sure Keller serves the most delicious carrots you’ll ever eat. In fact, I’m somewhat leery of eating his carrots for fear all others will pale and I’ll have to go to Per Se for carrots. However, this mindset creates an unfortunate divide between diner and kitchen. Back there in the kitchen lab, they preen with their tweezers and carrots, but in the dining room I’m ready to eat my chair.

There is an arrogance going on here: from the carrots to the heritage farm, the chefs assume an achieved perfection. But the diner may have a different notion of perfection. I’ve never heard of Four-Story Hills Farm, and I’m sure they breed a nice bird, but please refrain from appending their name to the dish. Once, we ate at a restaurant which served “This Morning’s Egg…” Thank God it was this morning’s: anyone who knows me knows I never eat yesterday’s egg.

To me, Chirping Chicken makes the absolute perfect bird. Cooks grill massive quantities of split chickens to a perfect char, fling them to cutting boards, whack into four pieces, and box them up with a few halves of warm soft pita, which eventually absorb the chicken juices. The meat is perfectly moist, but the key is the seasoning, which I’ve theorized results from the grill grates which are full of charred chicken flavor.

So, I do believe in perfection, or rather, that we all have our own idea of what is perfect. Perfect short ribs should be melting and accompanied by a richly flavored sauce, not oddly shaped cubes of meat tweezed onto a plate by a guy in a lab coat.

The exception is eggs. Eggs are always described as “unforgiving”. They’re so sensitive that an extra thirty seconds of heat can ruin them. And, of course, you can’t peek to see what’s going on in there. A hard-boiled egg yolk should be bright yellow and free of that unappealing sulphurous over-cooked egg odor. Once you’ve mastered them, you can create unbeatable deviled eggs or egg salad. Or slice them into a variety of salads and sandwiches.

I don’t care what farm produced your egg, and please don’t come near it with a pair of tweezers. It’s just an egg, and this is the way to make them delicious.

Hard-Boiled Eggs
Makes 4

4 eggs
salt and pepper

1. Fill a medium saucepan with plenty of water, bring to a boil. Place the eggs on a slotted spoon or ladle, and gently add to the boiling water, being careful they don’t fall and crack on the bottom of the pot. Set a timer for 13 minutes.
2. Drain, rinse or soak in cold water until just cool enough to handle. Peel, slice in half lengthways. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve warm.