Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Beef

A two-line restaurant note rather than a recipe in the domestic sense: Oscar assumes a cook who already knows how eggs behave in a pan. The blanks worth filling are the beef, the fat and the heat.

• What "smoked beef" means hereMost likely a salt-cured, lightly smoked keeping beef of the sort American groceries sold (and still sell) as chipped or dried beef, often in a jar; the recipe asks for it finely chopped. Thin-sliced pastrami or bresaola stands in; ordinary roast beef does not, since the point is concentrated salt and smoke against bland egg.
• Rinse if it is jarredModern jarred dried beef is aggressively salty. Rinsing it briefly in warm water and patting it dry before it hits the pan keeps the finished eggs from being inedible, and no additional salt should go into the eggs.
• The one-minute fryTwo ounces of paper-thin beef needs only a film of butter and about a minute over moderate heat, just enough to curl the edges and release the smoke into the fat. Left longer it turns to leather and will not soften again in the eggs.
• Heat for the eggsThe recipe says nothing about how to scramble; the safe reading is slowly in butter over low heat, pulled from the pan while still loose rather than dried out. Stir steadily and take them off a shade softer than you want them, since they carry on setting on the plate.
• SautepanAn ordinary wide, shallow, straight-sided pan. The recipe fries the beef first and then mixes it into the scrambled eggs; if you want the rendered fat, scramble the eggs in the same pan rather than a clean one.
• YieldTwelve eggs to two ounces of beef serves six generously, or four at a hotel breakfast. Scale the beef with the eggs: the ratio is restrained enough that the smoke seasons rather than dominates.
• "Any kind of garnish"The recipe leaves this entirely open. Fried croutons, a grilled tomato half, watercress, or a spoonful of the beef held back and crisped are all plausible; anything crisp or acid works against the softness of the eggs.