What came first? The chicken or the egg.

That's a question I'll probably never learn the answer to. All I know is that they're both delicious. I love eggs. Fried, scrambled, poached, deviled, shirred, however you can cook it, I'll eat it. Nothing beats a good hard-cooked egg. Notice I didn't say hardboiled? The egg should never boil. One crack in that smooth shell and your hard-cooked egg will just have to live the rest of it's short un-life as a poached egg.

As a kid my mother would make me eggs for breakfast almost all the time. I never liked cereal or pancakes or any of the sweet morning foods. I liked eggs, cheese, sausage, and bacon. That's what I wanted for breakfast everyday. Sometimes when I was staying with my grandparents, my grandfather would scramble up some eggs with pork brains and they were tasty. It's true. A 10 year old kid wanting to eat pork brains over Count Chocula. That pretty much sums me up as the weirdo I am today. Anyways, I love eggs. Want to know how to cook the perfect hard-cooked egg? All you have to do is put some eggs in a pot with cold water. Bring the water up to hard simmer (hard-simmered eggs?) and them pull the pan off the heat. Set a timer for 11 minutes. Then shock the eggs in ice water. Crack them open and I promise they will be perfectly cooked. Not a grey piece of yolk in sight.

Hard-cooked Eggs on a Toasted English Muffin with Porcini Butter and Murray River Flake Salt. I toasted some English muffins, put on a few slices of porcini butter, layed on a sliced hard-cooked egg, and topped with crushed fresh black pepper and a sprinkle of Murray River flake salt. The mushroom butter goes well with the eggs and the salt is from the Australian Alps imparting a nice mild salty finish.