Pimento cheese deviled eggs

A reader recently emailed me, asking for my deviled egg recipe. In her letter, she explained she was at work and had left my book at home. While she had hoped to find the recipe on my site, after poking around she noticed it wasn’t there.

In my reply, I said that to keep the books interesting, I include plenty of recipes that aren’t on my site. She said she understood, but added: “It doesn’t have to be the same recipe—there are many ways to make deviled eggs.” And this is very true.

Deviled eggs are one of those foods that you’ll see at most Texan gatherings—from birthdays to funerals, from Christmas Eve dinners to Fourth of July picnics. They are timeless.

They are also easy to prepare, as evidenced by the fact they were one of the first things that I cooked on a regular basis. When I was young, I’d come home from school, boil an egg or two, scoop out the yolk, mash it with lots of mustard, a little bit of mayonnaise, a dash of Worcestershire, and then go to town with the spice cabinet. Deviled eggs made for a very fine (and fun) snack.



It’s probably their simplicity and ubiquity that made me ignore them for so long in this space. And yet, even though I have a recipe in my first book (and there will be another in my second book), as my reader noted, there is no shortage of good ways to make a deviled egg.
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Corned beef hash with chipotle chiles and Irish bacon

When I lived in Austin, I worked with a woman who loved to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. She was a quiet lady and I was a little surprised at her enthusiasm. But she explained that her husband, a doctor with Irish roots, was continuing his family’s long tradition of having a corned beef supper.

As she described her gathering, it sounded so genteel and elegant—the opposite of what I had come to expect from St. Patrick’s Day. But as lovely as that evening was, she said her favorite part was the morning after. “We take the leftovers and make corned beef hash,” she said. “It makes for a fine breakfast.”

Now, corned beef hash wasn’t in my regular rotation. Matter of fact, I didn’t even try it for the first time until I was an adult. Growing up I’d been familiar with the dish, but my impression was that it was a strange canned food and something to be avoided.



Soon after my conversation with my co-worker, I found myself visiting an old Texan friend in Northern California. We went out for breakfast one morning and she ordered the corned beef hash. As I was mulling over the menu she suggested I follow her lead. When I expressed my doubts she said, “It’s brisket and potatoes. You’ll like it.”
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