Curried Eggs II
4 "hard-boiled" eggs 2 tablespoons butter 1/2 tablespoon finely chopped onion 2 tablespoons flour 1/2 cup cooked rice 1 teaspoon curry powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon paprika 1 1/3 cups scalded milk Chop whites of eggs and add to sauce made of butter, flour, seasonings, and milk, then add rice; heat to boiling-point, fill puff paste cases and sprinkle with yolks of eggs rubbed through a sieve.
A white sauce carrying chopped egg white, rice and curry powder, spooned into pastry shells — a luncheon dish of the chafing-dish era. It comes together in about fifteen minutes once the eggs and rice are cooked.
- The onionThe onion is listed but never named again in the method; at best it is folded into the "seasonings". Soften it in the butter over low heat before stirring in the flour, so it loses its raw bite and the roux takes on its flavour.
- Bloom the curry powderAdd the curry powder to the butter and flour and cook it a half-minute before the milk goes in. Commercial curry powder tastes dusty and raw if it only warms through in liquid.
- Scalded milkHeating the milk to just below a simmer before adding it was a common direction in books of this period, and it does help the sauce come together without lumps. Cold milk works, added in stages with steady whisking.
- Sauce consistencyTwo tablespoons of flour to 1 1/3 cups milk gives a thin to medium sauce. With the rice and egg white folded in it will thicken further as it stands, so keep it looser than seems right.
- Puff paste casesThese are vol-au-vent or patty shells — hollow rounds of puff pastry. Frozen puff pastry shells from the supermarket are the direct equivalent; bake and hollow them just before filling, as the sauce softens the pastry within minutes.
- The yolk garnishPressing hard-cooked yolk through a fine sieve gives the fine yellow crumb sometimes called mimosa. Do it over the filled cases at the table; sieved yolk dries out quickly.
- YieldEnough for four small pastry cases as a light main course, or six as a first course. It does not reheat well, the egg white turning tough and weepy.