TONNATO-STUFFED EGGS

"One of my husband Bill's favorite dishes is Vitello Tonnato. Cold sliced veal with a tuna sauce, it is an Italian version of surf and turf. Trying to imagine another recipe on which to use this tasty sauce, I thought of eggs. I love stuffed eggs. My mom has never stopped making them, even though the food police decreed them taboo for the longest time. In fact, as of October 2000, the position of the American Heart Association is that an egg a day is OK.

Eggs and tuna, like veal and tuna, are a happy marriage, and a couple of these stuffed eggs are substantial enough to make up a light lunch.

The most important thing to learn from this recipe is how to boil eggs. In fact, as Julia Child taught me, the paradoxically correct method is not to boil them. You start the eggs in cold water, bring them just up to the boil, pull them off the heat and let them sit. "Boiling" the eggs this way eliminates tough, chewy whites and the nasty green line that otherwise runs between the yolks and the whites. Try it. You'll be amazed."

6 large eggs
1/4 cup mayonnaise
One 3.5-ounce can tuna (Italian tuna packed in oil for more flavor, American tuna packed in water for fewer calories), drained
5 anchovy fillets, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon drained bottled capers
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Celery leaves and Nicoise olives for garnish

Place the eggs in a large saucepan and pour in enough cold water to cover by 1 inch. Bring to a boil over high heat. Remove from the heat, cover, and set aside for 15 minutes. Transfer the eggs to a bowl of half ice and half water. Cool completely, then peel under cold running water.

Cut the eggs in half lengthwise and remove the yolks. Keep the halves of the whites intact. Place the yolks in a strainer set over a large bowl and force through with the back of a large spoon. Add the mayonnaise and stir until smooth.

Combine the tuna, anchovies, capers, lemon juice, and olive oil in a food processor. Process until smooth and creamy. Stir into the yolks and season with salt and pepper. Mound a heaping spoonful of the yolk mixture into the cavity of the whites. Garnish with a celery leaf and an olive. Keep chilled until ready to serve.

ABOUT EGGS:
Have you ever had a hard time peeling your hard-boiled eggs? They were too fresh. This is the one time when an older egg is a good thing. For just about everything else, very fresh is best because fresh eggs will have greater volume when beaten. When eggs are "harvested" from the hen, they are rinsed off, which removes not only henhouse detritus (chicken poop among other things) but also nature's protective oily coating. As soon as this coating is removed, the shell is much more permeable and the egg starts to develop an air pocket between the shell and the egg itself. The older the egg, the larger the air pocket. The larger the air pocket, the easier the egg is to peel. How do you know the age of the egg besides the date on the carton? Try this experiment: Put a raw egg in the shell in a bowl of water. If it lies flat on its side, it is very fresh. If it stands up, it is getting older and is probably a good candidate for boiling. Most eggs you get at the supermarket are somewhere between the two. An egg that floats is an old egg. Toss it.

Makes 12 stuffed eggs
Excerpted from Sara Moulton Cooks at Home by Sara Moulton
Copyright © 2002 by Sara Moulton. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.