food tricks

[cellio]

This evening we went to an SCA household dinner. The theme was "old foods"; since I had failed to come up with any ideas around the "green and fuzzy" theme, we opted for what we hoped was entertainingly-faked documentation instead. We knew the host likes devilled eggs (as do I), so we told her we were bringing "devilled dodo eggs", and brought a facsimile of the recipe in the original hiroglyphics to prove it. Ok, maybe Mark Twain's "Diary of Adam and Eve" isn't really a primary source. :-)

I wanted to color the eggs in some way, just to give them an unusual appearance. I thought that I would get a purple hue by simmering them for a few hours in beet juice (with some white wine to help leech out color), but what I actually got was brown, not purple. Which was ok -- just unexpected. (I boiled the eggs, then rolled them around to crack the shells, and then simmered those. I completely peeled one egg to act as a color indicator, so I could check progress easily. On the other eggs I got a nice mottled effect.)

I have seen deep purple hard-boiled eggs. It's a striking effect with devilled eggs -- a nice contrast to the yellow filling. I wonder whether the process involved natural agents or chemicals.

We should take a turn for dinner sometime in the next several months, so I would like to grab a date around Purim and do "disguised foods". As part of this, I need to hit up my friend Yaakov for his "ham" recipe; I visited him for Purim last year and had this, and it was a remarkable imitation of real ham! I'm especially impressed because I'm pretty sure Yaakov has never tasted the real thing. (He called it "vam", so I infer that it's really veal. I don't actually know; Yaakov can say "here, taste this" to me and I'll do it without further questions.)

Comments

[steven.livejournal.com]

You saw Deep Purple hard-boil eggs? That must have been something.

[cellio]

Deep purple was part of the definition of "devilled eggs" when I was growing up. I just never found out how to make them that way, aside from vague hints about beet juice.

I mentioned this to Dani and he acted like I had grown a third eye or something. Apparently he has never encountered purple eggs. I gather, from the fact that I've almost never seen them as an adult, that his is the usual experience and mine is the unusual.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

It's NOT unique. :D Actually, what I find unusual is that I associate the purple deviled eggs to the Russian/Polish/Slavic ethnic background and from your surname I had assumed you were Italian by heritage. One caveat to Rani's recipe. Most packaged beets are packed in water, not beet juice. If you can't find beets packed in beet juice, cut a few into chunks and puree them in a blender. That's how we make red for Psyanky. And I agree, it takes longer than 8 hours. My folks would leave them for a couple of days

[cellio]

Actually, what I find unusual is that I associate the purple deviled eggs to the Russian/Polish/Slavic ethnic background and from your surname I had assumed you were Italian by heritage.

I am Italian. Well, half-Italian (my father's side), but that's the side that produced the purple eggs, so my German/English/Irish ancestors don't factor in anyway.

What's ironic is that Dani's family comes from Russia and Poland, so if you're right then he should have seen this more than I have. :-)

One caveat to Rani's recipe. Most packaged beets are packed in water, not beet juice.

Thanks for the warning.