Poached Eggs

Dipping a crispy toast finger (the French call it a mouillette) in a soft egg yolk has to be one of life's great pleasures. "When I was a kid, I loved it," says Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Evidently, he's still fond of it because he has created an adult version that's elegant enough to serve as a first course at a dinner party: He wraps smoked salmon around half of the toasts and sprinkles the rest with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, so it melts and forms a salty crust when baked.

Leafy greens like spinach provide a huge amount of nutrients, especially vitamin A and vitamin K.

Top Chef winner Nicholas Elmi tops lightly grilled asparagus with perfectly cooked eggs that are poached in Meyer lemon juice and water.

Cubanelles are long, sweet peppers that are usually light green (you can occasionally find red ones as well) and sometimes have a slight kick. After chef Tony Maws of Cambridge, Massachusetts's Craigie Street Bistrot (an F&W Best New Chef 2005) chars the peppers, he blends them with green hot sauce and serves the puree with meaty mushrooms and runny poached eggs.

Defne Koryurek created this recipe, a.k.a. Eggs alla Kortun, when she and her husband, Vasif Kortun, were living in New York City in the '90s. He loved the combination of toasted bread, poached eggs, sizzling feta and olives, so she decided to name the dish after him. When they returned to Istanbul, Koryurek opened a cafe, Refika; this was one of the first things she put on the menu. She says, "To our delight, it sold like crazy!"

Bouley serves eggs en cocotte with three purees--fennel, sunchoke and polenta--plus Comte foam.

This super healthy recipe calls for the use of poached eggs as an added layer of flavor and texture.

Chef Daniel Patterson conceived of this unconventional method for making eggs: He beats the eggs, cooks them quickly in a vortex of boiling water, then immediately drains them. The result is super-creamy, perfectly scrambled eggs; topped with goat cheese sauce, the dish becomes a kind of reverse omelet. If you're scrambling just one egg, the cooking time will be 20 seconds. For four eggs, the time increases to 40 seconds.

Black quinoa has a bit of an earthier flavor and crunchier texture than white quinoa and it suits different variations of roasted vegetables quite well. This recipe can be adapted to use vegetables of other seasons. In the spring, replace the squash with blanched peas, fava beans, or sliced leeks.

This starter was inspired by the torta pascualina (Easter tart), an Italian spinach-and-hard-cooked-egg tart that's popular in Argentina. Marcelo Betancourt serves poached eggs over sauteed spinach, with bacon-flecked bread crumbs standing in for the crust.