Breakfast Eggs

Eggs are the star of breakfast. Yes, they play a vital role in pancake and waffle batter, as a dip for French toast, and as enrichment for all sorts of pastries. But let’s consider dishes in which eggs are the featured attraction. A breakfast egg dish can be an elaborate quiche, stratta, or frittata (especially if it’s the late breakfast known as brunch), or it can be as simple as a single one with toast on the side. In restaurants, exactly how eggs get cooked is almost always up to the eater, the basic ways being scrambled, fried (over easy, over medium, or sunnyside up), hard or soft boiled, and poached. Eggs can become an omelet, filled with just about anything that will fit. As for eggs Benedict, even if all the other ingredients that compose it are subject to regional proclivities and chefs’ whims, poached eggs are always at its heart.What about egg sandwiches? Egg and cheese on a hard roll, long a New York street-cart specialty, is known pretty much everywhere. But it’s rarely that minimal. Those two ingredients get supplemented by bacon, sausage, or ham; and instead of a hard roll, the sandwich can be made on an English muffin, a bagel, a biscuit, or a length of French or Cuban bread. Regarding condiments, most egg sandwiches contain so much melted butter and/or pork fat/and or cheese that anything more might seem superfluous; but ketchup, Texas Pete hot sauce, sriracha, and mayonnaise all have their champions. Egg in a hole, also known as bullseye eggs and eggs in the basket, is an egg fried in a hole that’s been cut in a slice of bread and laid on the griddle. A Brooklyn restaurant called Egg came up with the best version. Known as Eggs Rothko, it starts with a thick slice of brioche bread toasted in butter in a skillet. A circle from its center is removed into which an egg is cracked and cooked soft. After that, the eggy slab is thoroughly covered with shredded Vermont cheddar cheese and broiled long enough for the cheese to melt into the top. Regional dishes that are all about eggs include migas and huevos rancheros in the Southwest, the New Joe special of San Francisco, the hangtown fry of Placerville, California, the fretta of Syracuse, New York, Hawaii’s loco moco, and the St. Louis slinger. Unless diners are otherwise notified, the assumption is that egg dishes are made with eggs laid by chickens. Quail, duck, and peacock are alternatives.