Quarantine Kitchen

April 13, 2020

This is the dish I sent as part of Quarantine Recipe Exchange so I made it this morning for breakfast in one of my shallow bowls. 

My favorite part is the endless seasonal riffs and simplicity once you embrace the necessary technique for the perfect hard-boiled egg as per this double-blind experiment published in The New York Times by J. Kenji López-Alt. 

Best of all - the dish can easily be tailored to your garden and seasonal produce. Substitute the peas & mint for ½ a red pepper and parsley or diced squash and tarragon. Have a little extra fresh salsa? Omit the vegetable/herb, infuse the oil with garlic/anchovy and top with the salsa. Stale bread? Cube it up, add it to the infused oil and top the dish with feta. It’s the kind of recipe that can be easily adapted to most cuisines and your left-over Easter egg stockpile.

8-min Hard-Boiled Eggs with Peas, Mint, and Anchovy Dressing

(adapted from Simple Italian Snacks, a cookbook based on the menu of ‘Ino in NYC which closed in 2013)

Ingredients

• 6 hard-boiled eggs
• 1/4 c olive oil
• 1/3 lb of English Peas*, shelled  
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• 3 anchovies, packed in olive oil
• 2 Tbs roughly chopped mint leaves
• Sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

* English peas can be substituted with snow peas, snap peas, or garden peas. And, if you don’t want more pea taste, you don’t need to shell. Just remove and discard the stem from the whole pea pod and dice ¼” thick. 

Recipe

1. Slice the eggs in half (like you would when you make deviled eggs) and place inside a wide shallow bowl. You should be able to see each yoke without layering them on top of each other. 
2. Make the dressing: heat the olive oil in a sauté pan until it is hot but not smoking. Depending on your stovetop, this is usually somewhere between low and medium. Add half of the peas, plus the garlic and anchovies. Gently heat the oil, infusing it with the flavors for 7min. Remove the pan from the heat and discard the garlic cloves. Add the mint. 
3. Pour the warm dressing over the egg slices. Add the remaining fresh peas. Finish with a generous sprinkling of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. 

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