Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Egg salad flavors

How to feed a host of people with 12 eggs:

Boil the eggs for 5 to 7 minutes. After a dunk in a cold ice bath, shell them and place in a big bowl. Take a pastry cutter and press into the boiled eggs, creating an instant egg hash. Cut up the eggs until they're as fine as you want the basic egg salad to be, then fold in a cup of good quality mayonnaise. Salt and pepper to taste. I will usually lessen the mayo and salt to avoid overseasoning. Keep in mind you're creating a buffet of flavors for the basic salad.

Now here's where it gets interesting. Have on hand a selection of ingredients to add to the salad. For example, I laid out small bowls of spiced mayonnaise (one with wasabi, one with chilli sauce), tarragon mustard, paprika (the paste form from Hungary), crumbled blue cheese, grated parmesan, ground red and green peppercorns, diced celery/green onions/jalapenos/cucumbers (a green salad to add to the white salad), tomatoes, black olives, marinated sun dried tomatoes, and some lettuce so that people on a low carb diet may use it instead of bread (think burrito). I also had a platter of biscuits, toast, and bread. If you want to show off some of the new salts available in the market, get some Himalayan pink salt, or the black salt from Bali, along with sea salt from Bretagne. And for those who like it, serve a dipping bowl of truffle oil.

Serve and feed at least 10 people. The fun is all in their ability to make interesting combinations of food. Have a backup batch of egg salad as folks tend to try something and tell their friend, "try this!" only to find they can't remember how they came up with it. Merriment ensues.

5 comments:

ChichaJo said...

I love egg salad! It combines two thing I like very much: egg & mayo...zoiks. I must try this one day...of cource I will just use 3-4 eggs then eat everything myself, hahaha! :) Love your combinations!

Watergirl said...

Katrina, the truffle oil has to be sparingly added I find. I like to add shaved truffles to an omelette, but somehow the oil with the egg salad was not as smooth on the palate. Might be the oil.

Joey, we've got to set up our chicharon buffet one day!

christine said...

What a brilliant idea, Mila! I hope you don't mind if I steal this from you. I love egg salad too, but never thought of having a DIY egg salad buffet, fun!

Watergirl said...

Steal away, Nena. Let us know what other delights you added to the smorgasborg.

kikas_head said...

What a great, great idea!!! Never would have thought of it but will surely try it!

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