Poaching For Easter Eggs

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

It just wouldn’t be Easter without the egg--and I’m not talking about the kind you hunt for. Searching through the grass and behind books on the shelf for plastic candy-filled eggs left behind by the holiday’s patron bunny is enough to work up an appetite for young and old. The dyed hard boiled eggs are still sitting pretty in their jewel tones and pastel shades and so they should remain until called for in an egg salad sandwich in the week to come.

Meanwhile one egg is left: the uncooked king. For this egg, the one left behind during the dying session destined not just to look pretty, like its hard boiled and plastic cousins. Its destiny lies on the breakfast table as delicious food for parents who are tired from chasing kids jacked up on sugary treats.

The edible, and indeed incredible, egg is one of the kitchen’s most versatile foods. The egg gives fluff to pancakes and custardy centers to French toast. It makes crepes chewy and pliable to be rolled with sweet and savory fillings and helps muffins to rise to airy heights above the rim of the muffin tin. Beyond all that, there is the multitude of recipes where the egg is the main event.

Unless you moonlight as a short order cook, making fried eggs to order or personalized omelets is a job best left for weekday mornings, not when cooking for an Easter crowd. Hence the egg’s role in Easter breakfast tends more toward large cooked egg concoctions like frittatas, strata, and big pans of scrambled eggs. But for all their practicality, the big egg dishes never achieve the elegance of an individually cooked egg complete with runny orange yolk and just cooked white.

Two techniques succeed in retaining the beauty of the single egg and lend themselves to mass production: the baked egg and the poached egg. Baked eggs require a bit of prep; ramekins are lined with butter and perhaps layered with flavorful ingredients like smoked salmon or caramelized leeks and topped with an uncooked egg. The ramekin is then covered in foil, placed in a water bath, and baked in a medium heat oven just until the white is set. The cooking is far from difficult, even if the prep is tedious, and the result is tailor-made for classy Easter brunch.

Poached eggs are not something people usually think about as being good for a crowd. But you don’t really think that every breakfast joint known for its Eggs Benedict is cooking the eggs to order? I’ll let you in on a secret: those breakfast places cook large batches of poached eggs and keep them chilled in ice water until ready to use. All that is needed is a quick 20-30 second reheat in simmering water before plating, an easy technique for simple elegance in mass quantities.

The perfect poached egg is the pinnacle of breakfast sophistication. I like layering the plate with other seasonal ingredients like spring’s first asparagus and lemon-shallot vinaigrette for a one plate beauty that rounds out well with fresh fruit and some of the Easter Bunny’s candy for a complete meal.

Perfect poached eggs can be cooked and held while the kids are still hunting for candy. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and reduce to a gentle simmer. Add a good tablespoon of white vinegar as the acid will help the white coagulate for a more perfect looking finished product. Working one egg at a time, crack it into a ramekin and then gently slide the egg into the simmering water. The large pot can probably do up to three eggs at a time, just make sure to keep the water at a low gentle simmer, enough that bubbles come to the surface but the water is far short of rolling in a boil. Cooking time will be about 3 minutes for the white to just set and the yolk to still be runny.

Just transfer with a slotted spoon to dry quickly on a paper towel and serve immediately, or transfer to ice water to hold until everyone is ready for breakfast. When your ravenous crowd is tired of candy and ready for some real food, reheat each egg for 20-30 seconds in simmering water and then serve.

This year my poached eggs will find a home perched atop toasted bread smeared with goat cheese and layered with lemon doused grilled asparagus spears. Rather than dealing with the mess of a Hollandaise as with traditional Eggs Benedict, each plate will get a spoonful or two of Meyer lemon and shallot vinaigrette. The runny yolk will be sauce enough for crisp asparagus and will mix nicely with the creamy cheese and tangy vinaigrette all soaking up into chewy country bread.

An egg is an egg but an Easter egg, when not filled with candy or dyed in celebratory colors, deserves a preparation sophisticated enough for a holiday but easy enough to feed a crowd. Poached eggs are just what the bunny ordered.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 8 eggs
• 1 bunch medium asparagus
• 9 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• salt and pepper
• 4 ounces goat cheese
• 1 loaf Pugilese or other country bread
• 2 Meyer lemons
• 1 large shallot