Egyptian Eggs
By Elizabeth Miller of the awesome Savory Salty Sweet Blog.
Somewhere right around the time at which you find yourself eating a 1-foot tall chocolate bunny while you simultaneously attempt to vacuum plastic Easter grass out of your living room rug, you will suffer an almost tragic realization about the state of your next few meals. Why, you ask? Well, remember a few days ago when you spent an afternoon dying eggs in anticipation of Easter? I almost hate to tell you this, but once Easter is over, you are actually going to have to eat those eggs. All two dozen of them.
Visions of Cool Hand Luke aside, it’s not all that difficult, in reality, to rid your house of a pile of hard-cooked eggs. The problem one encounters with all those eggs, once the salads have been made and the salt and pepper shakers have been exhausted, lies in a lack of variety. I’ve never been a fan of egg salads, though I am, admittedly, working on it, but I am a fan of eggs in general. Eggs are a great source of protein for those of us who don’t eat a great deal of meat, and I have found that a little ingenuity directed at an egg can yield wonderful results.
These delicious Egyptian eggs are a great example of what can happen when you take a few seemingly disparate elements and put them together in the name of creating something new. Though I swear by cooking scrambled eggs in pure butter, it had never occurred to me to sauté a hard-cooked egg in not just butter, but browned butter, that holiest of butter forms. Sprinkled with a good dose of warm spices and finished with a nutty coat of sesame seeds, these tasty little numbers are fit to keep you company all year long, lest you think you need to relegate them to Easter alone. I don’t know how they would taste with a gigantic chocolate rabbit, but on their own they are comfortingly rich, packed with flavor, and satisfying in almost every way imaginable.
Adapted from James McNair’s Breakfast
½ teaspoon sesame seeds
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon coriander
big pinch of sea salt
big pinch of freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 hard-cooked eggs, peeled then cut in half lengthwise
In a medium skillet, toast sesame seeds over medium heat until golden, about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a small bowl, combine cumin, nutmeg, coriander, sea salt, and pepper, then set aside.
In the same skillet used to toast the sesame seeds, melt the butter over low heat. When the butter stops foaming, add the eggs, cut side down, and cook until the eggs begin to brown, about 5 minutes. Turn the eggs over, sprinkle with spice mixture, then continue to cook, turning and basting with the butter in the skillet, until browned all over, about 4 to 5 minutes more. Sprinkle the cut side of the eggs with toasted sesame seeds, then transfer eggs to a serving platter. Drizzle eggs with the seasoned butter from the skillet.
Serve hot.
