A couple of months ago I was browsing BoingBoing and stumbled across the Egg Cuber, a device that can only be described as entirely pointless but immediately infatuating. With this amazing tool, a perfectly normal hardboiled egg can be turned into the most freakish of foodstuffs - something that once upon a time might have gotten you tossed into a pond in Salem.
Now cubic eggs are cool and all, but what good are they if you're not showing them off? And there's only one way eggs ever dress to impress: devilled eggs. When the thought of square devilled eggs occurred to me, I realized it addressed a couple of my (admittedly lesser) frustrations. On a normal dish, devilled eggs slide around and are hard to manage. You can get a special dish for devilled eggs, but that requires extra cupboard space, and I tend to dislike single-function dishes. Because really, what else can you do with a devilled egg plate, except maybe serve up some tasty Rocky Mountain oysters? A flat-bottomed devilled egg would stay in place while packing closer together on a standard dish - it's the best of both worlds. I'm ignoring, of course, the fact that the egg cuber still takes up cupboard space.
Especially if you buy three.
Why, you ask? Well, the egg needs to be put into the cuber while it's still warm, and it retains its shape best if it's chilled in the refrigerator. Making even a dozen devilled eggs would take all day with only one cuber, but three at a time is doable. Three can chill while three more cook, and they'll all be ready to switch around the same time. I found mine at thegadgetsource.com, but they can apparently be found in Asian markets for even cheaper.
For best results, place next to quality beer (or just enjoy one between batches):
Extracting the cubed eggs looks like so:
Try to gauge where the yolk has ended up, and cut in half accordingly. Odd shapes can always be masked with the filling, though, so no biggie.
The yolks in a cubed egg need a bit more coaxing than usual to extract, so I found that a fork was helpful.
For the filling, anything goes. I'm a minimalist when it comes to devilled eggs, so I just blend the yolks with mayonnaise, kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, and cayenne. I might throw in a dash of horseradish for kicks. Pickle relish? Not a fan.
If you want to turn the geek level up to eleven, as I do, make a nifty little stencil for the paprika with two L-shaped pieces of paper taped together. When going with the square theme, it's best to overdo it a bit.
The resulting appetizer is a surefire conversation starter. The conversation might start with "What the hell?" But for me, that's par for the course.
There are a few more photos in this Flickr set.
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