It never fails. When I look at a menu, my eyes magically zoom to any dish where an egg appears. You might, if you listen closely, even hear a little “oooo” escape my lips. (OK, maybe you don’t have to listen that closely.)
This love of mine started with New Mexican–style enchiladas. If you don’t have family from New Mexico, you might think an enchilada is a rolled tortilla doused in cheese and salsa and baked into almost a casserole. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just not what I call enchiladas. In New Mexico, enchiladas are fresh corn tortillas very lightly fried, then dunked into hot red or green chile sauce and placed flat, not rolled, on a plate. Toppings are usually as simple as freshly grated cheese and chopped onion, with another fried and dipped tortilla on top, continuing a few times to create a pancake-like stack of chile-soaked goodness. The whole thing is heated very briefly to melt the cheese, and then—this is the most important part—a perfectly fried sunny-side up egg is placed on top. As you slice, the egg spills into the chile, creating a luscious, gooey mix. It’s one of my favorite combinations, and it’s just not the same without the egg.
Still, it was many years before I thought adding an egg to sandwiches or pizza was a good idea. I don’t quite remember what prompted it, but I do recall vividly that I was sitting in a plaza in Rome when I finally decided I should try an egg on a pizza and discovered what I’d been missing all those years. Just like the enchiladas, the egg added a whole new level of yum. That moment must have flipped some hidden switch in me, because from then on, I became a complete egg fanatic. Fried egg tacos? Yep. Grilled cheese and egg? You betcha. Fried rice crowned with a sunny-side egg? Can you add another?
Now a hot bowl of soup with an egg lightly submerged brings a smile to my face. My eyes light up when cocktail menus include flips and fizzes with floating egg foams. Even desserts seem to shine just a bit more when topped with a billow of meringue.
And so, after years of gushing to my friends and family about my love of an egg on top, jotting down little notes about things that would be even better with eggs, and snapping quick photos on my phone of inspiring eggy dishes at my favorite restaurants, Put an Egg on It was born. These seventy egg-inspired dishes—some fancy-pants and some about as lowbrow as you can get without deep-frying Twinkies—are some of my favorites.