Good morning, DFO!

Hope everyone is enjoying their festive Memorial Day weekend. That’s right Canadian friends, it’s our turn for a day off on Monday. If you are celebrating Ramadan, shit, sorry to make you hungry but you can still make today’s menu after sundown!

To address the obvious, as mentioned in last week’s edition of Sunday Gravy, I’ve been pretty damn busy with family activities the past couple of weekends

but I still wanted to give you fine folks a new recipe to try. That’s just how fucking thoughtful I am!

A couple of weeks ago I did my grandfatherly duties and watched granddaughters 1 and 2 perform in the ballet, (Jesus wept) but the past weekend was a bit more on the fun side. Eldest right and granddaughter #1 and I went to Universal Studios Hollywood. We had a goddamn blast. Of course my luck was on display with the weather. Since the start of the year there has been only 1 day when the temperature rose above 80. Guess when that day was. Yep. Motherfucker got over 90 when we went. Not sure if you are familiar with the layout of L.A. and Hollywood but Universal is right on the edge of the San Ferndando Valley and The Valley, as we call it, can get hotter than an arc welder’s asshole in the Summer. Fuck it was hot.

Those of us who have braved the family theme park adventure should be aware of the challenges faced when attending a theme park on a hot day. After finally getting home I noticed I was being chased around the house by a seriously funky stench. It finally dawned on me that something smelled horrible and I’m pretty sure it was my ass!

One of the new features at Universal is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and they did a really damn good job with it. My daughter insisted that we be “sorted” into our respective Hogwarts house prior to going. Youngest right turned out to be a Ravenclaw, Granddaughter #1 who does the ballet and goes to church with her family was sorted into “Slytherin House” where she embraced her new found dark side and I was sorted into “Gryffindor.”

I swear to God the sorting hat chose the house for me! That’s like a new NFL fan putting on the sorting helmet and being sorted to be a Cowboys fan.

Fuck me.

This is where you ask, “Dude, why the FUCK are you talking about Harry Potter on Sunday Gravy?”

Because I was busy last week and wanted to rationalize why I’m doing an entire recipe for Egg Fucking Salad that’s why!

Besides egg salad is delicious and can be considered quite sexy when done properly. You know who loved egg salad?

Yeah!

So who’s with me?!

Let’s make some motherfucking egg salad, yo!

Egg Salad

8 eggs

3 slices of bacon cooked crispy and then chopped.

1/3 cup of mayo

1 tablespoon of brown spicy mustard or dijon mustard

1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon of fresh chives – minced

1/4 cup of onion finely minced.

1 teaspoon of paprika

Salt and pepper to taste.

Some crunchy salty chips as a side.

Some bread and other assorted sandwich related shit for serving.

AND…. That’s about it.

First of all, BACON! Hell yes we’re putting bacon in our egg salad. This shit will change your life! I also use some crispy bacon in my deviled eggs and I bet some of you will from here on out.

There are as many egg salad recipes as there are deviled egg recipes. I’m just giving you a general guideline here. If you have a deviled egg recipe that you swear by then give that a go. This is basically a big dish of mashed deviled eggs after all. Speaking of deviled eggs, when we did the 2nd Annual DFO Atwater Pub Crawl this year the last stop was the Tam O’Shanter pub in Los Feliz.

We ordered some deviled eggs for an appetizer and motherfucker were they good. The waitress told us “A little horseradish really gives it that extra zing.” I will be co-opting this idea into my deviled eggs from now on.We also tried the haggis and you know what? That shit was downright tasty. I’ll never have fear of trying haggis ever again.

So let’s do this damn thing in the proper order of preparation.

Get some fresh chives, mine are from my herb garden on my balcony.

Give them a quick rinse, hence the colander, and give them a fine chop. 

Now we’re going to mince up the onion.

If you wanted to skip this step you totally can. I really like a smooth texture to my egg salad but I find onion powder doesn’t provide the same intense onion flavor as the fresh raw onion. Dealer’s choice. As a quick aside, I don’t put fresh onion in my deviled eggs for whatever the fuck that is worth. Some people also use some chopped celery but I prefer mine with bacon instead. Bacon kicks celery’s ass every day of the week.

Now we’re going to get that bacon thang working. Grab a skillet and let’s cook some bacon.

Look how lean that shit is. This is a top shelf apple wood smoked bacon. It’s pretty damn lean for bacon so we need to get it really crispy. If I’m eating just a piece of bacon I like it to have a little chew. I don’t want it so crispy that it self destructs into ash when I bite into it. Since this is going into the salad it will need to be crispy.

One of these pieces of bacon did NOT make it to the salad. I think of it as sacrificing itself for quality control purposes. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Get out your chopping block and chop this loveliness up.

Now let’s get to the eggs.

How are your hard boiled eggs? Do they cook evenly? Crack easily enough? Those yolks don’t turn green do they? Are they easy enough to peel, cut in half, and scoop the yolk out so you can easily assemble deviled eggs? Are deviled eggs too much of a pain in the ass to make because of some of the answers to these questions?

I am going to show you a very cool, very easy, foolproof way to make a damn near perfect hard boiled egg.

Hell, this will be worth the price of admission right here!

First thing is use fresh eggs. I’ve read some recipes that say you want these about 5-7 days old so they cook and crack properly. I just buy a standard carton of “large” eggs at the store and assume they’ve been traveling a few days to arrive at the store. You can use the organic brown eggs and shit if you want but we’re turning these into egg salad. No need to get ALL crazy. Besides the eggs were on sale the day I bought them. Seventy seven cents for a dozen! Bonus!

Put a couple of inches of water into your cooking pot and then carefully add in the eggs. We want enough water to just cover the eggs. If you need to add additional water to cover, simply pour some water from a glass carefully over the eggs, try not to disturb them too much. Now we are going to turn the flame on the burner to a medium high heat and bring to a boil.

The second the eggs reach a roiling boil, cover the pot with a lid and TURN THE FLAME OFF. Set a kitchen timer to exactly 12 minutes and let the eggs sit.

Right before the 12 minutes are up set up an ice bath with some cold water and some ice cubes. Once the 12 minutes have expired gently move the eggs to the ice bath to shock them and stop the cooking process.

Set that kitchen timer to exactly 5 minutes and let these motherfuckers chill.

After the 5 minutes are up the eggs are done. To crack them, carefully tap the egg along a counter top. Be sure to lightly crack them all the way around then simply remove the shells.

You’ll notice I went ahead and put the eggs on top of the minced onion and chopped bacon.

Now let’s go ahead and invite the “wet team” to the party.

Of course I use real mayo for this shit. If you are using that Miracle whip horseshit, man! Time to step back and re-fucking-evaluate things. As for the mustard, Gulden’s Spicy Brown mustard is my day-to-day go-motherfucking-to mustard. Use the mustard of choice here. Have a horseradish mustard on hand? Oh SHIT YES that would work. Goddammit, why didn’t I think of that? Fuck!

You will also notice some apple cider vinegar as well. This dish needs a little acidic brightness to bring the egg salad to life. I’ve seen folks squeeze a little fresh lemon in theirs. In a former deviled egg recipe of mine I would use the juice from a jar of pickled jalapeno for both an acidic pop as well as a little bite from the jalapeno. Remember these are guidelines. Make this shit your own.

This is when you get your spices going. Paprika, salt and pepper today but go crazy with it.

I’ve used chili powder before with great results. Know your audience and their heat tolerance. A sprinkle of fresh cayenne would add a righteous kick to this fucker. We are keeping it simple today.

Now let’s get out a bigass bowl and get everything in there.

As you ponder the meaning of life and the possibilities of an afterlife, and as you think over our place in the universe and our meaning for existence you may also be curious about “How the fuck are we gonna mix this shit up?”

Tell ’em Marv.

Many a cook has eloquently stated that the very best kitchen tools there are (“hands down”, get it? fuck, sorry) are your freshly washed hands. You could use a big knife to chop the eggs but them little bastards are round and that shit could be dangerous. We want this to also have a homemade look so we want some of the whites a little bigger than others. Get your paws in that bowl and gently tear them whites up while you mix together all of the ingredients. This may take a few minutes to get right but put in the time and you will be happy that you did.

Here, let’s have a look.

There it is! I told you that shit could be sexy.

Now all you have to do is get some bread, toasted or not and slather a good helping of this on. Like a little fresh tomato slice and maybe a leaf of lettuce? It’s your sandwich so hell yeah. I like a little toasted rye and just a few extra grinds of black pepper on mine.

Let’s look at that banner image again.

You’re gonna want some nice salty and crunchy chips for this here. In fact let’s talk about chips. Here’s my choice for this sandwich.

Those are Cape Cod Original kettle chips. Perfect crunch and salt level. See that “reduced fat” label? Trust me there is still more than enough grease on these that you won’t notice the reduction in extra fat. I like a solid crunch with mine.

Got a favorite for this type of dish? Let us hear it in the comments.

So, there we are!

There’s something very soothing about a nice fresh batch of egg salad. Whether it’s using up the extra eggs from Easter or just treating yourself to it’s rich, savory yet delicate flavor, this is something you will be coming back to again and again.

See? That’s pretty fucking sexy isn’t it?

Oh goddammit!

I promise a real return to the luxurious shit next week. I’ve got new kitchen toys and everything.

Much love to you folks.

PEACE!