As I think I’ve mentioned before, I love eating out. If we
were rich, I swear, we would eat out every night—even though, yes, I love to
cook and, yes, that money would be better spent writing a big old check to
Partners in Health. I know.
Anyhoo, Momofuku is this incredible restaurant in New York,
where you wait in line for nine hours so that you can be hustled through the
most expensive meal of your life in twenty minutes. But, oh! That meal. We have
eaten things there—their famous ramen, their shrimp buns, a special octopus
salad—that I have thought about almost every day since eating them. That said, it’s not an ideal restaurant for
our strictly vegetarian Birdy, being largely porkcentric and kind of unapologetically
unaccommodating overall. However, Birdy did order a neon green cucumber salad
that was improbably good, and, also, this simple, briny pickled egg that
arrived beneath a thick shower of fried shallots.
Okay!
This is my version of Food52’s version, which is a version
of the version in Milk Bar Life. I
added the fried shallots, since that’s how we ate them at Momofuku. Serve these
as part of a bread board for dinner, or for breakfast, lunch, or a snack. Don’t worry if you run out
of shallots—the eggs are great without them too, although I bet that slivered scallions, crushed potato chips, and/or crumbled bacon would make great toppings too.
6 large eggs
1 tablespoon sugar
6 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
¾ cup soy sauce (the recipe recommends low-sodium, but you
can guess whether or not that’s what I used)
Neutral-tasting vegetable oil
1 shallot, halved lengthwise and sliced thin
Kosher salt
Half-fill a large pot with water, and bring it to a boil
over high heat.
Carefully lower the eggs into the boiling water (I do them
two at a time with a ladle) and boil them for 7 minutes (or, according to the
incomparable David Chang of Momofuku, for 6 minutes and 50 seconds), stirring
them for the first minute and a half (I think what that does is keep the yolk
from settling to one side, and it works really well.) Fill a bowl with ice and
cold water to prepare for the eggs being done.
While the eggs cook, whisk the sugar into the water in a
small bowl, then stir in the vinegar and soy sauce.
After 7 minutes, use a slotted spoon to move the eggs to the
ice water. When they’re cold enough to handle, peel them, and put them in a
container that they just fit in in a single layer. Pour the marinade over them
and refrigerate. The recipe says 2 to 6 hours and I, naturally, went for the
full 6. Remove the eggs to a lidded container and store in the fridge for—the
recipe claims, improbably—up to a month. You can reuse the soy-sauce mixture
for more eggs. I do.
When you’re ready to serve, fry the shallots. Heat a very
small pan over medium heat, add a big splash of oil (there should be enough oil
to cover the bottom of the pan) and fry the shallot, stirring constantly, until
browned and sort of fluffy-seeming, about 3 minutes. Drain on a
paper-towel-lined plate and salt them. (Use the extra oil for something: salad
dressing or stir-frying cabbage, say.)
Slice each egg lengthwise a top with a small shower of
shallots. If you skip the shallots for any reason, then sprinkle a little pinch
of coarse salt on the yolk before serving.
