The Breakfast Game

Last week I promised I’d tell you about my favorite thing to do with poached eggs. Here it is, from the bottom up: two slices of sourdough bread browned in a pan with olive oil, red pepper flakes and a splash of balsamic to finish; then some of those cherry tomatoes—guaranteed to be flavorful, even in winter, because of the square-cube law and sliced in half with Brad’s trick—broken down in a pan with garlic, salt, pepper, and a little white wine; then avocado slices drizzled with lime juice and sprinkled with salt; and finally, two poached eggs, made with Hannah’s horse-without-a-saddle technique.

After we discussed the how-to-cook of poached eggs, I asked Hannah about the how-to-eat of them. What did she like to do with them? She told me that a poached egg with (uncooked) cherry tomatoes, sliced avocado and sourdough toast had become her quick pre-work breakfast a few years ago.

I was intrigued and set out to make the breakfast myself, but I knew I’d be changing a few things because, you see, I’m a maximalist. It’s not a trait of mine I necessarily admire. I’m always impressed by meals with just a few ingredients that still manage to feel complex and well balanced. But when I cook, I like to push things as far as they can go. Basically, I love cooking, playing the game, and so the more ingredients I add or steps in a recipe, the more I experiment, the more I get to play. I feel like I hardly cook the same meal twice. If I do everything the same, if I don’t experiment, if I’m not taking a risk and learning, then what’s the point of cooking?

Of course I don’t want the product to suffer at the expense of the process, so I have to exercise restraint. But here’s what works about my process: when I do get a recipe just right, when a meal becomes more than the sum of its parts and all its ingredients work together, I recognize it and—somewhat grudgingly, I admit—I stop tinkering. My love of the process and of experimentation puts a great pressure on the results. A meal has to be really good, truly synergistic for me to stop experimenting. The bar is high. And the breakfast I adapted from Hannah clears that bar with ease.