Last week was Easter weekend and my parents came over to enjoy a brunch with fruity mimosas, guilty banana chocolate croissants and also some healthy pleasures. To me Easter is all about sweets; chocolate eggs and bunnies, spring cupcakes, monkey/banana/or anything else sweet that keeps you craving for more!

Obviously I’d like to treat myself on something guilty on these festive days, but to balance the brunch from the runny banana chocolate croissants I also made a healthy salad (with black eyed peas, almonds, micro greens, lemon-y dressing and left-over asparagus), served with crusty rye bread (yes, my favourite Liefde & Passie bread!) a berries fruit bowl, and these beautiful asparagus deviled eggs. Doesn’t it look awesome?!

Although everything is a keeper I wanted to add another snack to the blog because I feel I have not enough of these. The deviled eggs with asparagus are definitely worth snacking or a perfect bite for when you’ve visitors any time. The eggs take some prepping, but it’s simple and all worth it!

I boiled 6 eggs in total because I was scared I’d mess up a first time and so I would not have enough eggs to serve, but trust me this recipe is foolproof. So, we ended up with 2 eggs per person 🙂

ASPARAGUS DEVILED EGGS. – serves 4 eggs
4 medium/large eggs
2 garlic cloves
4 asparagus spears (take small ones)
1 1/2 tbsp mayonnaise
1/2 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp Greek yogurt
salt and pepper

TOPPINGS – choose whatever you like
2 slices of prosciutto/bacon
pinch of smoked paprika
chopped chives
crumbled blue cheese

For the eggs:
Fill a sauce pan with cold water and add the eggs carefully. Put on a medium/high heat until the water starts boiling and let it continue boiling for 1 minute. Then add a lit and put the pan aside, just let it rest for 15 min. The warm water will further cook your eggs. Once the 15 minutes are over, pour out the hot water and run ice cold water over the eggs. Let it sit in cold water until the eggs are fully cooled down.

To dress the eggs:
While you’re waiting for the eggs you can start preparing the rest. Pre-heat a grill pan, or use an ordinary medium sized sauté pan. For baking the prosciutto or bacon I don’t use any oil or butter, but just start baking the slices on a medium heat (slowly..) until browned and let rest on some kitchen paper towel so it has time to turn beautifully crispy. Skip this part if you’re not using prosciutto or bacon, and just move on to the next step.

Warm up the pan on high heat. Chop of the woody root ends of the asparagus, put in a bowl and drizzle some olive oil on top. (A tip about the size of asparagus below )* When the pan is warm throw in the asparagus, season with some salt and pepper and start baking until they are tender but not too soft. Don’t worry if they char a little, that makes them tasteful. Once they are done, add to another bowl and then I let it rest in the fridge to slow down the cooking process and keep them from becoming soft.

Then I drizzle some olive oil on the garlic cloves that I leave in the skin and add them to the pan and turn it to a medium heat to cook the garlic until they are soften and the skin is somewhat blackened (if using a grill, otherwise browned is fine too).

Prepping the egg:
Now the challenging part comes in, but ones you get a feeling for this it’s really simple. Grab an egg, and now you want to tick entirely around the egg shell with a knife so you get a cracked line to easily take the top off. I make sure the top is about 1/4th of the egg so I got 3/4th of the egg left. Or keep it simple and just peel the entire egg and chop off the head of the egg.

It could be that you can’t reach the egg yolk yet, but since you don’t want to serve less than half a egg, scrape the egg white with a knife until you reach the yolk. Put all yolks in a separate bowl.

Once you got all egg yolks separated press the garlic out of the skin in the same bowl and also add the mayonnaise, mustard and yogurt. Keep stirring with a spoon until it’s fully incorporated and it gets a smooth texture. If using a kitchen machine it will make it even creamier!

Now you can either spoon the prepared egg yolk back into the egg whites or use a piping bag (I made one by using a ziplock bag) so you can do it more neatly. Before finishing with the toppings take your asparagus from the fridge and chop off a bit of the bottom if you think they are too long and carefully stick it down in the egg yolk.

Decoration time:
Top the eggs with anything you like, I crunched the crispy prosciutto, crumbled some blue cheese (gorgonzola), chopped chives and a pinch of smoked paprika. Let’s be honest, you can leave out all toppings, but a deviled egg needs a pinch of paprika powder, and trust me the smoked variant makes it incredible!

Enjoy!

xSam

*I used small asparagus, but you can also use the regular sized ones. You’d like to use the tip with a bit of the stem, so by using bigger sized asparagus you’ll have to chop of quite a bit of the stem to make it fit in the small egg (don’t forget to chop of the woody root ends!). Don’t throw away the stems though and use it for something else. You can also grill/bake more asparagus at the same time and use the leftovers for a salad, for example.