In the professional kitchen, eggs are used in a variety of ways. For example, we slightly dry fish eggs or roe from salmon and trout so the skin or the membrane is a little hard.

The eggs are a beautiful red colour and when you bite into them they burst in your mouth. Amazing. I love using herring eggs, as they are a wonderful opaque colour and, like salmon and trout roe, they can really finish off a dish.

All fish produce eggs; however, when they are doing so, the flesh of the fish doesn’t taste very good, as all of the nourishment is going into the reproductive process. We use the flesh of fish caught during their reproductive phase for mousses and stocks only.

I can clearly remember the first time I saw garden snail eggs. These are pure white and look incredibly exotic; they also have a fantastic flavour. As you might imagine these are hard to get so the price can be as much as, if not more than, that of even beluga caviar. Because of the increasing demand, snail eggs are now being farmed in America, Italy and France.

But to my mind you can’t beat real, free-range eggs. Like many kitchens, the eggs that we use most commonly at Thornton’s are chicken and duck eggs. Duck eggs are stronger in flavour than chicken eggs as they are not farmed as intensively. Duck eggs are more difficult to get hold of, but are great for making omelettes.

When I was a child, my dad made me eat a raw egg for breakfast at 6.30 every morning, and then he would head off for a ten-mile run. He said it would make me strong and give me lots of stamina like him, and I believed him.

At first I hated the taste and texture, but I got used to it and every day I would break and egg into a cup, mix it with a fork and knock it back before heading off to school. More palatable by far was the omelette my mother used to make using our own chicken and duck eggs from the farm.

Her recipe was simple: whisk three eggs in a bowl with a pinch of salt. This helps to break down the white of the egg, making it easier to blend the yolk and white together.

Then ”clean” the omelette pan with salt before using it. You do this by adding salt to the pan and placing it on the heat for a few minutes. Take the pan off the heat and use kitchen paper to rub in the salt. The latter, in this instance, acts as a much better solvent than water to clean your pan before cooking with it.

Dispose of the salt, return the pan to the heat, and add a little olive oil. Add the eggs and stir until the liquid starts to bind. Add whatever filling you wish to the centre of the mixture and fold the eggs over like an envelope to close. The entire process of cooking an omelette should take about 30 seconds. It is incredibly easy to make the perfect omelette, but surprisingly few people can make one.

When we are hiring new chefs at Thornton’s, making an omelette is always the first test of their culinary skills.

One of my favourite dishes is fried duck eggs with white truffle shavings on top. This combination provides a wonderful contrast both in terms of flavour and cost. Duck eggs are about €2 each, while white truffle costs a good deal more!

I place the truffles in a box with the eggs, as the porosity of the shell allows the eggs to take on the flavour of the truffle. In this way I can have truffle eggs for breakfast and also make truffle custard and truffle ice-cream.

This trick doesn’t work only with truffles; if you place eggs with any kind of strong food it will affect the way they taste.

Here is a recipe for truffle scrambled eggs – brilliant and so easy to make. You can substitute the truffle for something else if you wish, such as mushroom.

Truffle scrambled egg
For 4 persons
6 medium-size eggs
50 ml cream
50g unsalted butter
25g chopped truffle
5g sea salt
4 slices of truffle
1 slice of brioche
4 egg shells, halved
4 chive pastry pieces

Method:
1. Break the eggs into a bowl, add the salt and mix well. (Retain the halved egg shells for serving the dish.) Add the truffle and cream and mix again. It is best to use a fork and whisk clockwise as it helps to mix the white and yolk together and provides a little air to the mixture.

2. Cut the pastry into 6cm by 4cm pieces and lay them on parchment paper. Blanch the chives, cut them to the same length place them carefully in the middle of the pastry pieces, and lay another pastry piece on top. Cover with parchment paper with another tray on top and cook them in an oven at 150ºC for four minutes until golden brown.

3. Melt the butter in a warm pan. Add the truffle and egg combination and stir with a wooden spoon over a low heat until it starts to set (do not overcook, as the egg is better when it is runny or soft).

4. In the meantime, cut the brioche into four thin pieces, like the soldiers you used to eat when you were a child, and toast then until golden brown.

5. Place the truffle scrambled egg into the eggshells, and serve in an egg cup, with a slice of truffle on top and a slice of the chive pastry and some ‘’soldiers” on the side.

Kevin Thornton is one of the chefs featured in the Guerrilla Gourmet series on RTE One this Friday. Thornton will cook a five-course gourmet meal for his guests against the backdrop of the Rock of Cashel. He will use only camping gear to recreate the conditions under which the last meal was served on the Rock in the 15th century.

Kevin Thornton is a Michelin-starred chef and owner of Thornton’s Restaurant on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. www.thorntonsrestaurant.com