2 hard-boiled egg yolks, pressed through a fine sieve
2 cups flour
1 cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated
1 tsp. salt, or to taste
1 tsp. black pepper, or to taste
3/4 cup chilled butter, chopped
2 Tbsp. heavy cream
In a food processor, pulse yolks, flour, Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. Add butter and pulse until it reaches the texture of coarse meal. Add cream and pulse just until dough forms a ball. Roll out between 2 sheets of parchment paper to 1/2 inch thickness. Place dough, still in the paper, on a baking sheet and freeze for 10 minutes. Remove top sheet of paper and bake 10 minutes at 350F. Remove from oven, cut into 1 1/2-inch diamonds, and return to oven to bake until golden brown, another 18–20 minutes. Cool on baking sheet placed on a wire rack.
Yield: about 6 dozen.
Adapted from a recipe by Bon Appétit.
Some more recipes to help use up all those Easter eggs:
Incredible Egg recipe collection
Curried egg salad sandwiches
Gribiche (hard-boiled egg) dressing, which can be used to make:
Arctic char with greens and gribiche dressing
New potatoes with Parmesan, black pepper, and gribiche dressing
Sauteed asparagus and morels with gribiche dressing
Bacon and egg tortellini
Campanelle with eggs and capers
And here's a set of recipes for natural egg dyes to help start the whole circus off.
Getting the shells off
As Farmers' Market shoppers, you've no doubt noticed that those lovely fresh eggs tend to cling to their shells when boiled. One way to avoid this problem (or at least attempt to) is to buy your eggs a month in advance and let them age, or buy them at a supermarket where it's been done for you. However, since egg production increases as the chickens get more daylight, there will be more eggs closer to Easter, and anyway who wants to eat old eggs? Another option a hen-keeping friend suggests is to leave the eggs on the kitchen counter 1-2 days before cooking, which has a similar effect and adds the advantage of bringing the eggs to room temperature, which helps keep them from cracking when you cook them.
One trick I've had good luck with is to peel the eggs as soon as they're cool enough to handle; not, alas, an option if you need to refrigerate the eggs overnight so you can hide them in the morning. This leaves us with the nearly-as-effective technique of peeling them under warm running water, angling the egg so the water has as good a chance as possible to seep in between the egg and shell. Yes, this goes against food safety advice, so work carefully and consider the risk. Leave the eggs in the fridge until the last moment (giving them a good many hours to rechill after being found) and work with a pot of very cold water at hand to drop the eggs into as soon as they're naked.
Versión en español: this post is also available in Spanish.
Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.
