DEVILED EGGS NIÇOISE

Makes 1 dozen

There’s a special place in my heart for deviled eggs. Everyone loves them: Just look at how fast they’re eaten at summer parties. Salade niçoise always includes hard-cooked eggs, so for this flavorful deviled egg riff the other ingredients in the famed salad are included in the yolk filling.

6 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and halved lengthwise

9 red cherry or grape tomatoes, divided

½ cup light tuna packed in oil, drained

2 tablespoons chopped oil-cured black olives

2 tablespoons bottled Italian dressing

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced

Cut the eggs in half lengthwise, remove the yolks from the whites, and grate the yolks through the large holes on a box grater into a mixing bowl. Chop 6 of the tomatoes and shake them in a sieve.

Add the chopped tomatoes, tuna, olives, Italian dressing, mayonnaise, lemon juice, and mustard to the bowl with the egg yolks. Stir with a rubber spatula to combine the mixture, and then season with salt and pepper to taste.

Slice the remaining cherry tomatoes into quarters lengthwise. Mound the yolk mixture into the egg whites, and top each with a slice of tomato and a few basil shreds. Serve immediately.

Note: The yolk mixture can be prepared 1 day in advance and refrigerated, tightly covered.

Hard-Cooked Eggs Explained

The trickiest part of making deviled eggs is boiling the eggs so that they peel easily without the white bonding with the shell, and here’s my foolproof method. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. It should be large enough that the eggs can cook in one layer, and you want enough water in the pan so that it returns quickly to a boil. Add cold eggs right out of the refrigerator, cover the pan, and bring the water back to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer the eggs, uncovered, for eleven minutes. Use a timer so you don’t overcook them. Plunge the hot eggs into a large mixing bowl of ice water, and let them cool until chilled in the water. Crack the shells all over against the sides of the mixing bowl, and then begin to peel them starting with the large end.

Using this method you’ll find that the white remains tender instead of becoming rubbery and there’s no ugly green ring around the yolk. The gross color is iron sulfide, and it happens when the iron in the egg yolk reacts to the hydrogen sulfide in the egg white when an egg is woefully overcooked. Unlike when other foods are overcooked, however, the eggs are totally edible, even though they’re tough and dry.

Bullshots are a Blast from the Past

From the mid 1950s to the start of the Reagan administration the Bullshot was everywhere. Gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen heralded its popularity with everyone from fashion models to movie producers on the West Coast, and it was the drink to order for those inhabitants of the tony Upper East Side of New York City whose names always appeared in boldface. By the end of the 1970s people were becoming more interested in gyms than supper clubs, and the white wine spritzer elbowed out the Bullshot along with spirits like bourbon and Scotch. But now it’s back on the lists of restaurants such as Gabrielle Hamilton’s Prune in New York City.