Hard-boiled Easter eggs are for amateurs. I said what I said. Now let me tell you why. There’s a better, cleverer way to decorate your holiday table, and I’ll never forget the first time I saw it in 1991.
Imagine, if you will, the most dramatic woman you know. Now multiply that by ten and you have a small inkling of my mother. A community-theater-performing, cabaret-headlining (true story), shuffle off to Buffalo tap-dancing woman. Now picture her with an early-nineties perm in a Laura Ashley dress leaning over a kitchen sink, her face beet red, with a Grade A egg to her lips and a stream of yolk shooting out of the bottom of it. “Ta-da!” she squeals as the last drop of yellow goo ricochets into the basin. “That’s how you make Easter eggs, girls!”
End scene. Applause. Curtain.
I was probably around seven when I first witnessed my mother’s unholy Holy Week eggstravaganza. But as eye-popping as her technique was to me and my little sister, Mary, mom was onto something. By blasting out the interior contents of an average twelve-pack of grocery store eggs, you end up with a dozen beautifully intact shells, perfect for dyeing. No horrifying sulphur smells here come Maundy Thursday. Instead, these pastel ovums will remain remarkably fresh for weeks.
Of course, it takes finesse—the wristwork of Bob Fosse, my mom might say—to properly execute a blown Easter egg. But for our purposes, I’ll spare you a review of choreography according to the Great American Songbook and simply give you the instructions as I witnessed them:
1. Gather your tools: a peeling knife, and a pushpin or safety pin. (The gentle curve of a peeling knife may help in this endeavor, but any small, sharp knife will work.)
2. Like a baby bird using its beak to hatch, gently tap the center of the wider end of the egg with the knife. The goal is to form a small hole roughly the size of a fake beauty mark.
3. Insert your pin in the hole and swoosh it around to break up the membrane.
4. Repeat process with a smaller hole on the smaller end of the egg.
5. Lean over your sink basin (or a bowl if you wish to make a frittata later), and with the same enthusiasm as a small child seated in front of a candlelit birthday cake, blow. Blow hard. BUT do not let the pressure of your hands on the delicate egg increase.
6. Keep blowing the egg until white and yolk have streamed out into the sink.
7. Place empty egg in a carton to await the dyeing process.
8. Make a Manhattan.
9. Drink the Manhattan.
10. Repeat with as many eggs as you desire.
11. Have a happy Easter. And don’t forget to call your mama.
