An Oeuf for the Books

My vision of egg salad was something that grandmas brought to picnics. My mental image of the dish was mushy, yellowy-gray in color, and reeking of mayonnaise. Never did I truly understand the beauty of a good egg salad until I moved to England.

Once a week I allowed myself to stop for a sandwich at the London-based sandwich shop Pret A Manger. One week, I had been late in getting out of class. The sandwich pickins' were thin, so I begrudgingly grabbed their egg salad sandwich. My life was never the same again. It was creamy, fresh, and delicious.

So the other day when I was alone at home and thinking what to make for lunch, I suddenly got a huge craving for Pret. I figured this was the perfect time to make my first-ever egg salad sandwich.

The first step was to hard boil some eggs. I had done this before, but more often than not they'd looked pale, with that thin grey line around the yolk. I was determined to figure out how to fix this. With some thorough research on TasteSpotting, I finally figured out how the pros do it.

To Hard Boil Eggs:

1. Place eggs in saucepan, and fill with cold water.

2. Bring water to a boil. Turn off heat, cover saucepan with a lid, and let sit for 7 minutes.

3. Remove eggs and place in an ice bath for at least 3 minutes.

See the difference? The egg on the left was over-boiled, and the egg on the right was prepared using the method above.

The next step was to put together the most parfait sandwich:

Ingredients

6 Hard boiled eggs

1/3 cup Mayonnaise

1 tsp Dijion mustard

1 tsp Grainy mustard

1/4 tsp Paprika

1/8 tsp Freshly ground pepper

Tiny pinch kosher salt (the mustard is already salty)

Directions

1. To peel the hard-boiled eggs, roll the eggs on a hard surface. The shell should crack and easily peel off.

2. Cut the eggs in quarters, and place in a medium-sized bowl. Using a fork, roughly chop the eggs.

3. Add the mayonnaise, both mustards, paprika, salt, and pepper. Incorporate all the ingredients together with the fork.

This salad is best served with two pieces of toasted whole-grain bread (still warmmmmm!), and a bit of romaine lettuce. The salad turned out to be so good, my parents made it their dinner! Woohoo!