Egg-stacy.

(I know, you didn't think a pun could get that bad. THE PUNISHER RETURNS.)

They say egg cookery is the most essential of chef-y skillz. To become a chef in Jacques Pepin's kitchen, prospective hires had to make a perfect omelette as their entrance exam. The 100 folds in a chef's toque symbolize the hundred ways he or she should be able to prepare an egg. So, friends, put away those egg beaters and find someone with a chicken coop. My friend, Bear, was kind enough to bring me a dozen from his hens in Austin.

BEHOLD. Btw, Chicken eggs vary in color due to pigments which are deposited as the eggs move through the hen's oviduct. These pigments are genetic, something like hair color, and vary from chicken to chicken. Mmm, oviduct deposits.

Many a befuddled friend has asked how restaurant eggs are always so perfectly round and/or cooked evenly. The secret? Either a very small pan or, as pictured below, a ring mold. You see, as the egg ages part of the white becomes watery and less viscous than the other parts. In fact, the height of the white is used commercially to determine the age of an egg (using Haugh units, which no one cares about). The watery parts spread out in a pan and cook to a leathery crisp by the time the yolk or perky white have a chance to feel the heat. Ring molds/small pans cajole the egg to an even thickness. This is a really long winded way of saying, it cooks better this way. Spray the ring mold with non-stick spray and make sure it's food safe before heating in a pan, please.

Free range eggs generally have a richer golden hue to their yolks because the chickens have had more opportunity to eat carotenoid rich plants (as opposed to being locked in a 8"x8" pen with only corn feed to console it)

Bien. I ended up putting this on an english muffin with roasted eggplant, spinach, and whole grain mustard but was too frenzied with hunger to get a good picture. Please try to imagine it for now and I will make it for you the next time I see you.

Now that you know more than you ever cared to know about eggs, here are some cool things you can do with them:

Soak an egg in vinegar to take off the shell.

Make Chinese Marbled Eggs. This preparation doesn''t change the flavor, but they're striking. Excellent instructions here: http://www.pigpigscorner.com/2011/01/marbled-red-vinasse-eggs.html

Attempt to play along with Wylie Dufrene and his love of eggs. And yes, the intro music is awful.

There's also:

• The perfect cheese souffle
• An egg briskly cooked atop a woodfired pizza
• Hollandaise
• Angel food cake
• Macarons
• Mayonnaise
• Challah
• Poached eggs on... anything
• Soft scrambled eggs, which are more complicated than you think. Go here for an appropriately fatty recipe. Also, when I googled "Bill's scrambled eggs" this came up: 

And so many other dishes. Doesn't seem so hard to get to 100, does it?