Eggs, Vert-Pre

A two-line recipe that leans entirely on a sauce given elsewhere in the book. The eggs are easy; the decision to make is what vert-pré means in your kitchen.

• The five minutes is the hingeTwelve eggs dropped into already-boiling water for five minutes come out with set whites and a soft, still-fluid yolk; the recipe pairs them with a hot sauce, though it does not say what texture it expects. Cold eggs straight from the fridge may need a further minute, and eggs left in longer will give you a chalky centre.
• Shelling soft eggsThe cold plunge stops the cooking and contracts the white from the shell, but a five-minute egg is fragile. Crack and peel under running water, starting at the broad end where the air pocket sits. Very fresh eggs — which the recipe specifically asks for — are the hardest to peel cleanly.
• Sauce vert-pré: this means a green herb sauceSauce vert-pre -- Filippini expects you to turn to his sauce section. The name points to a green herb sauce; since the recipe calls for it hot, a warm white or emulsion sauce tinted and flavoured with blanched, pressed herbs -- parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives, sometimes with spinach for colour -- is a reasonable reconstruction, though no single fixed formula attaches to the name. Blanch the herbs briefly, squeeze dry, puree and stir in off the heat so the colour stays bright.
• Keep the sauce below a simmerWhether you build it on béchamel, velouté or an emulsion, adding the herb purée to a boiling sauce turns it olive-grey within a minute or two. Warm the sauce, then finish with the greens at the last moment.
• Serve hot on a warmed dishThe recipe asks for a deep dish, i.e. one with sides that will hold the sauce. Warm it first; twelve peeled eggs sitting on cold china will chill the sauce before it reaches the table.
• YieldTwelve eggs serves six as a lunch or supper dish, or twelve as part of a larger service. Halve the recipe easily; the sauce does not scale down as neatly, so make a full batch of that.