Hard-Cooked Eggs in Russian Dressing

This may be the simplest recipe in the book, but I wasn't overly enthusiastic about making it. How good could hard-cooked eggs smothered in Russian dressing really be? Regardless, this isn't a 'make the recipes you think will be good' blog, it's a 'cook everything in the book' blog. So here we go.

The first thing you're going to need are some hard-cooked (boiled to me) eggs. Because this book and Keller himself are so incredibly thorough, there are instructions on exactly how to do this: Cover eggs with cold water, bring them to a boil, simmer for about a minute, and then turn off the heat and let the eggs just sit there for ten minutes. Put them immediately into an ice bath. I have made eggs this way twice now. The first time was kind of a mess, which I attribute to not cooling the eggs in the ice bath for long enough. They were pretty much impossible to peel. This time was much better, and everything turned out just as expected. Because these shots are so interesting, here are a couple of pictures:

Now that the eggs are taken care of, let's make some Russian dressing. I, like Wikipedia, had always thought Russian dressing was mayo and tomato based. Bouchon apparently does not believe in Wikipedia. This Russian dressing is mayo, chili sauce, shallots, parsley, chives, and lemon juice. So it's close, but we're trading chili sauce for ketchup.


Those are home-grown herbs. Aren't they great? I don't usually quote the book verbatim, but in this case they're incredibly complex so here they are:

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl, mixing well. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours to allow the flavors to develop.

That's pretty tough, right? Here's what it looks like:
More great shots, right? Again, a direct quote for the difficult serving instructions:

Cut the hard-cooked eggs lengthwise in half and place them cut side down on a serving platter. Spoon the sauce generously over the eggs.

I didn't really think they were anything great, that's for sure. It tasted more or less like you would expect that combination of ingredients to taste. Obviously there were eggs, there was mayo, and there was chili sauce. Nothing spectacular, but you can make it in about four and half minutes, so maybe it's a good addition to an set of appetizers.