When I was young my mom used to make egg salad. Hard-cooked eggs, mayonnaise, diced dill pickles, all mixed together into a sunny glop, awaiting two slices of white bakery bread to be sandwiched between. I never ate it. All of my least favorite ingredients blended together to make one wholly undesirable lunchtime entree. As I’ve gotten older, my tastes have changed. I like dill pickles (but never pickle relish); I’m learning to tolerate hard-boiled eggs, and alas, I still do not enjoy mayonnaise (and yes, I’ve had the homemade kind).

I’m not the hugest fan of savory egg dishes, except frittatas. And while you still won’t see me gobbling up a large plate of scrambled eggs on a Sunday morning, or puncturing the yolk of a fried egg, the bright yellow ooziness quickly sopped up by a piece of generously buttered toast, I am coming around to certain egg dishes. I love a poached egg, and a soft-boiled egg, with all of its various accoutrements, how could you not love it? Certain scrambles, jammed packed with seasonal vegetables and heavy on the cheese are even becoming acceptable to me. But the hard-boiled egg was still difficult for me to consume. I blame it on my mother…

It was the sulfuric smell, the yolk crumbly and tinged a greenish-blue, that turned my stomach. But I learned, thanks to Mark Bittman, and his fabulous tome, How to Cook Everything, hard-boiled eggs do not have to be this way. If cooked properly, the white will be springy (not rubbery), and the yolks will be buttery and smooth (not desiccated and tough). That greenish cast over the yolk comes in fact, from over-cooking. The iron that is contained in the yolk, interacts with the sulfur from the white. The longer one cooks the egg, the more heat is transferred through this cooking process, and the more greenish the yolk becomes. How I see it, this greenish cast is equivalent to burning your eggs. Sure they’re edible, but do you really want to eat it.

By dropping the egg gently into simmering water, and keeping it at slow simmer, for the next 11 minutes, you will have the ideal egg. The whites will be just cooked, yet not stewed, and the yolks will be gazing up at you, with a sunny disposition. As for me, this has been somewhat of a revelation. Now I can’t go crazy, if confronted with a plate full of hard-cooked eggs, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. But cooked properly, sliced relatively thinly, and served open-faced on a sandwich of arugula and sliced radish, drizzled with a high quality, peppery olive oil, I might say that’s a delightful lunch.