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Columbus Picnic X
Peel a dozen hard-cooked eggs and cut them in 2 crosswise, clipping a little piece from the end to leave a flat surface for the finished eggs to stand on. Pulverize yolks and mix with fresh butter, vinegar and smoked tongue or lean ham, to taste-also season as you like 'em with mustard, pepper and salt. Fill empty white halves with mixture, taking care not to break them, press them together and when you get to the picnic stand them up on a paper plate so they look like the eggs Christofo Colombo stood on end to surprise the natives and in utter defiance of the law of gravity.
A deviled egg reassembled into a whole egg, stood upright as a table joke. The technique is straightforward; the details that need translating are the meat, the fat, and the fact that this is a dish that travels.
- The hinge: trim before you fillClip the flat standing base off each half before the filling goes in, while the white is firm and empty. Trying to level a filled, reassembled egg will split it along the seam.
- Smoked tongueOnce a standard cold-larder item, now a butcher's order. Finely minced smoked ham, prosciutto or a good bresaola gives the same salty, cured note; allow roughly 2 oz of minced meat to twelve yolks.
- Fresh butterIn recipes of this period 'fresh' butter distinguishes unsalted butter from the salted keeping sort. Butter was one of the binders used for stuffed eggs before commercial mayonnaise was widely available. Use unsalted butter softened to room temperature, about 3 tablespoons, and salt at the end since the cured meat is already salty.
- Vinegar to tasteNo quantity is given, and the amount genuinely matters: a teaspoon or two of cider vinegar sharpens the yolks, more than that loosens a butter-bound filling into something that will weep in a warm basket.
- Cooking the eggsFor yolks that mash smoothly and stay yellow rather than greening at the edge, bring the eggs just to a bare simmer for about 10 minutes, then chill hard in ice water. Older eggs peel more cleanly than very fresh ones.
- Pressing them togetherOverfill slightly, mound the filling domed, then bring the halves together and press gently so the seam closes with filling rather than air. A brief chill firms the butter and glues the two halves in place for the journey.
- Carrying themEgg and cured meat bound with butter is a picnic staple that still wants to travel cold. Pack in a single layer in a rigid box with ice packs and keep them under refrigeration until you set them out.
- YieldA dozen eggs makes twelve reassembled whole eggs, enough for six to eight as part of a picnic spread.