“You know what you do really, really well, sweetheart?” the hubby said to me one evening not long ago, as we sat next to each other at our kitchen table, chatting while cradling glasses of wine.

“What’s that?”

“You really know how to boil a good egg.”

God, that man really knows how to get my engines going.

I have loved a good hard-boiled egg ever since my poorest student days in college. Even today, I buy an extra dozen of eggs at the grocery store every once in awhile and boil them all at once to store in the fridge. In the mornings over breakfast, the kids love cracking the shells and peeling them studiously, flake by flake. I love them in noodle broths, as a final gooey flourish to an already comforting dish. I love them next to my toast, bursting open with a pinch of my fork and soaking my bread with golden rivulets of shimmering yolk. I love them so much that over lunch with a friend last month at Tanpopo Ramen House, I squealed when the shoyu ramen was topped with a halved hard-boiled egg. The yolk was almost gelatinous. “It’s like a jogging — not runny — egg!” I clapped my hands. People stared. I did not care.

My friend then introduced me to a pictorial chart about boiling eggs that’s basically changed my life in the month since I’ve been using it. Lately I’ve made eggs with all different boiling times, but my favorite — my absolute favorite — has to be the eight-minute egg. The white emerges with a springy bounce, and the yolk is a perfect pitch between thick ooze and just-cooked chalkiness. The other day I put them in a very easy baby spinach salad topped with chunks of tomato and slices of red onion and swirled with my “house” mustard vinaigrette. The result was pure magic.