Something that not many people know about me is that I really, really like deviled eggs. Whenever we’d go to Dinosaur Barbecue I’d order a few pieces to go along with our wings, and when I had the chance to get the roe-topped eggs at Yardbird that were sumptuously featured on Anthony Bourdain’s Miami Parts Unknown episode, you better believe I did. The concept of the dish makes it ideal for both well-executed traditional takes and more experimental riffs, and I’m happy to try them all. For Super Bowl Sunday we made a deviled ham and egg courtesy of Bryan Voltaggio that had equal parts in both the familiar and the experimental, and I kicked myself for not making deviled eggs more often at home.
So when Food52 published a roundup of 68 recipes from Black food creatives in honor of Juneteenth last week, it’s hardly surprising that my mind and stomach immediately gravitated to a lovely-looking deviled egg topped with Cajun-spiced shrimp. The elegant plating and straightforward list of ingredients made me want to make the recipe as soon as possible, and so I placed it on my Sunday dinner menu since it was on the lighter side, and in retrospect, we needed one more dish anyway.
The recipe hails from the food blog Seasoned To Taste, and while it’s a new-to-me blog, I’ve already bookmarked some recipes to make from it in the future. In the meantime, this recipe in particular makes an excellent argument for keeping a bag or two of frozen shrimp at the ready, because then you can make this dish whenever you’d like, whether you’re feeding a crowd or just making a few for yourself or someone else. It’s easily scalable and flexible enough that you can add a little more of any ingredient to your liking. I only deviated from the recipe in two notable ways; one out of necessity and one out of preference. The dill I bought specifically for this recipe wilted by the time I pulled it out to start cooking, so I minced some garlic scapes I bought the day before from a farmstand and they worked well in a pinch in both the filling and the garnish. Instead of a traditional hot sauce, I opted to use sambal oelek as that’s our kitchen’s spicy condiment of choice right now.
The heat of whatever spicy sauce you prefer along with the sweet relish, punch of fresh herbs, and hit of acid from the lemon juice all come together to cut the richness of the mayo and egg yolks, and it makes it way too easy to wolf these down. We each had three as an appetizer before our main course of broiled quail and chopped salad but had we made more we would have devoured them just as readily.
The recipe can be found here, and this won’t be the last time I make them this summer, now that I have most of the ingredients on hand in my pantry. The next time I do make them, I hope the dill has the decency to not spoil before I need it.
The Manhattan [food] Project 