Piedmontese Stuffed Eggs
I love these simple antipasti, which my aunt Angelina in particular makes so well – but never
enough of course. In Piedmont, antipasti is our ruin anyway, and most people have a good
repertoire of starters.
First, the eggs. Angelina once looked at the expiry date of some eggs I had bought at the
supermarket and said: ‘Eggs should be treated like meat. You wouldn’t eat week-old meat,
would you?’ Of course she has been used to collecting her eggs daily for the last 70 years.
My point is that you should buy free range, or barn eggs at worst, and use them as fresh as
possible. Or get a couple of chickens like I did. That way, you’ll have fresh eggs daily and you’ll
know what you’ve fed them and how they’ve been looked after.
You don’t have to include tuna in this recipe. I have had these eggs with and without, and
they were both nice. Serves 4–6
Ingredients:
6 hard-boiled eggs
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon capers
3 anchovies, chopped
2–4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
2 tablespoons canned tuna, drained
salt and freshly ground black pepper
A little in advance of serving, you will have to boil the eggs. Delia Smith is still the authority
if you want to know how long to boil an egg as she is a superb technical cook. Her Complete
Illustrated Cookery Course was the first cookbook I ever owned and the basis for my home
training! Delia says to place the eggs in cold water and bring them up to a gentle simmer. Then
to boil size 4 eggs for exactly 6 minutes and larger size 1 and 2 eggs for 7 minutes. I find this
works to perfection.
You can’t peel warm eggs, so that is why you need to do them a little earlier. Put them
under cold running water to speed up the cooling process if necessary.
Once shelled, cut the eggs in half lengthways and remove the yolks into a bowl. Add all the
other ingredients and mash with a fork until you have a stiff mixture. If it is too gloopy and hard
to mash, then just add a little more olive oil (or the oil from the tuna is also very nice).
Then simply spoon the yolk mixture back into the whites and serve with sliced meats like
prosciutto di Parma, prosciutto cotto, bresaola, speck, salame or mortadella.
*taken from the book ‘From Seed to plate’ by Paolo Arrigo, published by Simon and Schuster