I love deviled eggs, and these are some of the most delicious, and certainly the most
Instagramable deviled eggs ever. This recipe comes courtesy of chef Brian Fitzgerald at
Lazy Susan, an amazing mid-century-modern-themed tapas bar here in beautiful Macon, Georgia,
and no — no artificial food coloring is involved in this dish.
"It's a new twist on a Southern classic. Usually it's like an Easter special or something.
They're using beets — pickled beets."
And while Brian's menu calls this dish "The Beet Goes On," it actually is not made with
beets, which is good for me, because beets unfortunately turn my stomach.
Any deviled egg starts with some perfectly hardboiled eggs. Brian brings a big pot of
water to a boil with some salt and vinegar in it.
"The vinegar kinda helps break down the shell a little bit. All the eggs straight into the
boiling water, preferably all at the same time, as much as possible — just to get
an even cook on all the eggs."
After precisely 14 minutes of cooking, he pulls them straight out into ice water. Once
they're cool, you can peel them, halve them, scoop out the yokes and save those for later.
"I always like to rinse off any residual yoke that's left there. That'll help with the evenness
of the dye at the end."
And speaking of the dye, here it is — a whole head of purple cabbage. Chop it, throw
it in some salted boiling water for five minutes, then drain. Brian is reserving the cooking
water — you don't have to do that, but you'll see why he does it. Drained cabbage goes into
an ice water bath. If you didn't shock it like this...
"...it would lose some of its brightness — its color."
Most of that ice should melt after a few minutes. If there's any ice left in there after you
drain again, pull it out. You're gonna puree this and the ice would water it down.
"This is our industrial-grade food processor called Robot Coupe. If you don't have one
of these, you could always use either a Ninja or any type of blender that you have available."
In goes a quarter cup of white sugar, a tablespoon of salt and a third cup of apple cider vinegar.
"And we let her rip."
The resulting puree needs to be thick, but liquid enough that it can fully and evenly
coat the egg whites. Every cabbage will be different. If it looks like it needs liquid,
you can throw in some water, ideally that reserved cooking liquid. The main reason Brian
reserves that liquid, though, is because he'll actually re-use this puree to dye several
batches of eggs for the restaurant, and...
"...we reserve some of the blanching liquid to kinda bring the color back out after the
first or second time using it."
Yeah, you're probably not gonna do that at home, which is why you probably don't need
to bother reserving the cooking water.
Now you can see that he's just layering the eggs in the puree.
"Face up in the stain, so that when we layer more on top of it, they can fall in and fill
in all the cracks."
And just let that sit in the fridge overnight. There's one other pickling step to be done
the night before we eat.
"So what we have here is brown sugar, apple cider vinegar and dried mustard seeds."
Pickled mustard seeds are my new favorite thing in life. He's throwing a cup of the
seeds into enough cold water to cover, then he'll just bring them to a boil.
"Now these are gonna triple in size as they hydrate."
Yeah, this is probably more than you'd need for a couple dozen eggs, but put these on
sandwiches. While they're coming to a boil, mix together 3/4 cup of apple cider vinegar,
a quarter cup of brown sugar and a quarter cup of warm water to help the sugar dissolve.
No salt.
"Mustard seeds are pretty salty enough as it is."
And when they boil, you can drain them off — notice how Brian is using a spatula to
kinda nudge out any remaining water, and then in the pickling liquid it goes.
Mustard seeds have always been a classic flavoring when picking other things, but here in the
American South, they had an epiphany.
"I think they would end up getting to the bottom of a jar of pickles, having the mustard
seeds and tasting them and being like, 'Oh wow, that's a condiment in and of itself.'"
If you're skeptical, just wait until these sit in the fridge overnight.
Meanwhile, I can show you one of the funniest things I have seen in some time. Lazy Susan
here is a brand new restaurant, and so, a few days ago, the Macon-Bibb County Commission
had to discuss the matter of their liquor license. That's the mayor of Macon, Robert
Reichert, there.
"Now, next is Lazy Susan Tapas Bar. Can I get a motion and a second..."
"I have a question. Bivins. You mentioned a topless bar. Can you explain that?"
"Yessir. As I understand it, a tapas bar, T-A-P-A-S, tapas, is a small plate. It's kinda
like appetizers and things like that. [...] But this is not a topless bar. It's a tapas bar."
"I think we were hearing it as topless."
"Well, I'm trying to do the best I can, sir. It's a tapas — it's a small plate bar. Can
I get a motion and a second on those license applications?"
I hope that brightened your day as it did mine. Thanks to my dear friend reporter Liz
Fabian who flagged that golden nugget for me.
OK, it's the next day, and check out those beautiful pickled mustard seeds. They call
it "poor-man's caviar." I am not poor, and I would take these over real caviar any day.
There's one other condiment to prep, and it's very optional. Brian calls it "prosciutto
salt." He's got like a dozen thin slices of prosciutto there on a rack.
"Stuck it in the oven at about 250 degrees for about two hours."
That's like 120 C — more of a dehydration step than a cooking step. After it's dried
and cooled, he puts it into a spice grinder or coffee grinder type thing and blitzes it
into a powder.
"I'ma lay it out on some paper towels just to dry out any residual oils or moisture left
in there."
If you wanted to keep this meatless, you could easily replace this with the more traditional
paprika, or Brian recommends grinding some pink peppercorns.
Now we can exhume the eggs, wash them off, and there you go. Devotees will know why this
dish caught my attention. But does that egg now taste like cabbage?
"The pickling of the cabbage kinda comes through in the egg a little bit and it gives it a
little bit firmer of a texture. But no, I wouldn't say it tastes like cabbage much at
all."
For the filling, we've got the reserved egg yokes and...
"Duke's mayonnaise, because we are in the South."
Indeed, it must be done. Now, people normally just mash up the egg yokes however, but Brian
here is passing them through a sieve — this just makes sure he gets a really even consistency
at the end. No big lumps of yoke.
"So for right now, I'm just using just enough Duke's mayonnaise to kind of wet it a little
bit to start, and I can add more as I go."
Similar quantity of creole mustard goes in. You could use any mustard. Salt and pepper,
and as he stirs this up – I don't know about you, but my instincts are saying "that's
too dry." Not it's not. It is perfect.
"You don't want it to be runny, because even if it's a little bit hot out or if it just
sets for a little while, the moisture is just gonna kinda absorb more and then it'll flatten
out. It won't retain its appearance."
Flavor-wise, this is the kind of thing you can just taste and then add more salt or whatever
else it needs until you like it. Remember it needs to be strong enough to flavor both
itself and the white underneath it. Time to assemble.
You can see he's putting in the filling with a piping bag. You could obviously just spoon
it in. You can see what he means, though, about it needing to be firm to hold its shape
and not just spill out. Here comes those exquisite pickled mustard seeds — a hearty spoonful
on each egg. A dusting of that powdered prosciutto on top of each one. Again, paprika or pink
pepper would be awesome instead.
"And then we're going to garnish it with red-veined sorrel."
Just about any leaf could work for pretty here, but boy those are real pretty. Brian
plates that on some salad greens, mostly for friction — it makes them less likely to
slide off the plate in transit to the customer.
And that is just outrageous. The egg is creamy and sweet. The mustard seeds pop between your
teeth just like caviar — they burst. That is a great classic elevated to something really
fine and fun.
Hey, real quick, as I record this, Lazy Susan is like nearly every other restaurant in the
whole world in that it is ramping down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a nightmare
for any restaurant, but especially for these poor folks who just got started. I implore
you to do whatever you can to support your local restaurants in this time.
If they're offering take-out food, take it. The experts are saying take-out food poses
a minimal risk compared to anything else you're probably eating right now. There's some articles
about that in the description.
And when the experts give us the all-clear, please go back to your local restaurants.
If you're in my part of the world, please go to Lazy Susan. Look at these lacto-fermented
pickles Brian has going. These are for the summer. Come eat them, when it's safe.
In the meantime, give these eggs a shot at home. I'm gonna.