La Petite Chinoise : LPC: Devilled Eggs or Oeuf Mimosa

Which came first: the chicken or the egg? It’s one question that no one can answer satisfactorily the world over.

Ancient Chinese believe that an egg is the start of a new life. Many cultures celebrated important events with eggs and still do. For example, the Chinese would color chicken eggs red for auspicious events, such as birthdays or weddings. We have all been subjected to peeling 16 red eggs on our 16th birthday… thankfully the red egg tradition stops when one is relatively young. I mean, can you imagine how much time would be spent peeling 70 red eggs?

In the western/ Christian culture, eggs are part of the Easter celebration. Easter isn’t Easter without painting emptied eggshells and the chocolate egg hunt. The celebration of eggs goes back to ancient times when hens laid very few eggs in winter. The return of spring also coincided with the egg-laying season at Easter time.

Eggs are so versatile and are used in so many different ways in so many types of dishes. There is poaching, frying, baking, coddling, scrambling, boiling, soufflé-ing… Have I missed out any other ways? In my opinion, the hard-boiled egg is at once the simplest and the hardest thing to cook.

There are two schools of thought for making the perfect hard-boiled egg:
The “cold water” method: Put the eggs in tap water and bring to a boil. Quickly reduce to a gentle simmer. Simmer for 10 mins.
The “hot water” method: Bring the tap water to a boil. Reduce to a gentle simmer. Slip the eggs into the water. Simmer for 10mins.

The “cold’ or ‘hot’ method is not a question as eagerly disputed as the “chicken or egg” question…But no matter which method you prefer, here’re some tried and tested faux-pas by yours truly that should be followed for a decent hard-boiled egg.

Eggs should be at room temperature before boiling

Water should cover the eggs at least by 5cm/ 2inches.

Use relatively young eggs (a green ring will appear circling the yolk on old eggs; reaction between sulphur in white and iron in yolk)

The water should be simmering, not boiling (although we call it “hard boil”)

And definitely not a rolling boil, as that would crack the eggs

Add a drop of vinegar into the boiling water so that any cracks will be “sealed”. Vinegar will coagulate the egg white. Well, at least this was the case in chemistry class at school…

Devilled Eggs

Ingredients:

10 eggs, hard-boiled

7 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 teaspoon white wine

2 teaspoon Dijon mustard (“à la ancienne” with mustard seeds)

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon curry powder (I used Madras curry powder)

Sea salt and ground black pepper

Peel the hard-boiled eggs. Half them width-wise.
Trim off end ends of each half of the eggs, so that the eggs are able to stand upright.
Dig out the egg yolks.

Mix with the rest of the ingredient, with a fork. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. Either pipe the mixture with a nozzle or shape with a spoon onto the cave of the egg white.

Perfect as an aperitif dish, with a glass of chilled dry white wine

The French version of Devilled Eggs is "Œuf Mimosa". The ingredients are:

10 hard boiled eggs

7 tablespoons of mayonnaise

bunch of finely chopped parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Also very tasty!

I made the above Devilled Eggs with both methods. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between the two methods. Can you? If you know how to get the egg yolk centred, I would also love to hear about it!!

Comments

My (imperfect) hard-boiling method is to start in cold water with vinegar, bring to a boil, then cover and remove from the heat and let sit for 17 minutes. About 2/3 of the time, these eggs are perfect. I get the green ring the other 1/3, but that may have to do with the age of the eggs.

I've never put curry powder in my deviled eggs, but I bed it's fantastic. My grandmother follows the Southern American tradition of putting sweet pickle relish in her deviled eggs, but I've always found that sort of distressing.

Posted by: Martha | June 18, 2006 06:27 PM

Hey Martha:
Thanks for your comment!
I think it's wonderful that every culture has its special way of making devilled eggs... One of my friends makes her devilled eggs with the whole egg chopped up, then mixes it with the spices and puts her devilled eggs in the place of the avocado seed. A bit strange at first, but tasty after the first bite.

Posted by: LPC | June 18, 2006 07:51 PM

do you known that few salt put in the boiled water of eggs make more easy the "pelure"?

Posted by: MJ | June 22, 2006 11:56 AM

MJ: Thanks for the tip! Anything to peel eggs quickly.

Posted by: LPC | June 22, 2006 12:13 PM

Besides the salt method, dousing the eggs into cold water right after removing them from the pot helps too.

Posted by: ashan | December 5, 2006 04:52 AM

Ashan: Thanks for the tip!

Posted by: LPC | December 5, 2006 04:45 PM