Sunday, March 13, 2011

Recipe: Deviled Eggs, Medieval Style

I found this recipe in an anonymous Andalusian cookbook of the 13th century. It was a HUGE hit at the vigil. All the eggs disappeared. They are very flavorful, and the yellow yolks are spotted with green bits of cilantro. So if you like deviled eggs, but you don't like the whole mayo/mustard flavor palette and/or want to use a more heart-healthy oil, you might want to try these. I made 40 stuffed eggs; you'll want to make that many too, even for a small party. You can't eat just one of these!


Here is the original:

The Making of Stuffed Eggs
Take as many eggs as you like, and boil them whole in hot water. Then put them in cold water [peel them] and split them in half with a thread. Take the yolks aside and pound cilantro and put in onion juice, pepper and coriander, and beat all this together with murri [use soy sauce], oil and salt and knead the yolks with this until it forms a dough. Then stuff the whites with this and fasten the two halves together. Insert a small stick into each egg [to hold them together as a whole egg], and sprinkle them with pepper, God willing.


My redaction:

40 hard-boiled eggs
3/4 c. chopped cilantro
3 smallish onions OR 2/3 c. onion juice
1 tsp. black pepper
1 1/2 Tbsp. ground coriander seed
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
1/2 c. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
pepper to taste

Peel the eggs, slice them in half and remove the yolks into a bowl. (Keep egg halves together if you want to serve them as whole eggs; to serve them as modern half eggs, you can separate the halves.) In a food processor, puree the onions. Place the onions in a sieve over a bowl and drain out the juice into the bowl, working the onion pulp against the sieve, until you have about 2/3 cup juice/puree in the bowl. Back in the food processor, place the egg yolks, onion juice, cilantro, pepper, coriander, soy sauce, olive oil, and salt and puree until smooth. Put the yolk mixture into a pastry bag and pipe it into the egg halves. (For the full-egg presentation, pipe it into one half, over-filling it, then place the other half on top and secure with a toothpick.) Sprinkle with pepper and serve.