Home › The World's Kitchen › Stuffed Eggs with Sorrel
Stuffed Eggs with Sorrel
Cut a small piece from both ends of twelve freshly cooked, hard-boiled eggs, then cut them in halves crosswise. Scoop out the yolks and place them in a bowl with a tablespoon butter, one small, chopped, previously browned onion, half teaspoon salt, saltspoon cayenne and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Pour in two tablespoons cream, thoroughly mix with a spoon until smooth, then with a teaspoon fill up the cavities of the whites with the stuffing. Prepare a puree of sorrel, spread over a baking dish, arrange the eggs (standing up), sprinkle two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese over the sorrel, place a little bit of butter over each egg, then set in the oven for six minutes, remove and serve.
A straightforward deviled-egg gratin; the only real obstacles are the archaic small measures and the fact that no oven temperature or sorrel quantity is given.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon. Cayenne at that level in twelve eggs' worth of yolk is assertive but not fierce; the nutmeg at the same measure is on the generous side, so start with half if you are cautious.
- Oven heatThe original gives none. Six minutes only makes sense in a hot oven, 400–425F, and the goal is to heat through and colour the cheese, not to cook anything. Everything in the dish is already cooked.
- How much sorrelNo quantity is stated. For a dish holding 24 egg halves, figure about 1 lb of sorrel leaves, which wilt down dramatically; stew them in butter until they collapse into a khaki purée, then season. Sorrel needs no water and cooks in three or four minutes.
- Sorrel substitutesSorrel is seasonal and rarely in supermarkets; look for it at farmers' markets in spring. Spinach purée sharpened with lemon juice is the usual stand-in, though it lacks sorrel's clean sourness.
- Aluminium and sorrelSorrel's oxalic acid reacts with bare aluminium and cast iron, turning the purée grey and metallic-tasting. Use stainless, enamel or glass for both cooking and the baking dish.
- Cutting the eggsThe trimmed ends are what let the halves stand upright in the purée — do not skip that step, and cut crosswise, not lengthwise. Peeling is easiest on eggs cooled fully in cold water; "freshly cooked" here means cooked that day, not laid that day.
- The stuffingChop the browned onion very fine or press the mixture through a sieve, or the filling will not pipe or spoon smoothly. Two tablespoons of cream into twelve yolks gives a stiff paste; add a little more if it crumbles.
- YieldTwelve eggs give 24 standing halves — a first course for eight, or a light supper for four to six with bread.