I had a little moment recently of coincidence or prescience depending on what you believe.  I was thinking “Better start looking for recipes for Pieathalon – that will be coming up soon”.  I found a copy of Mollie Katzen’s recipe for Devilled Egg Pie from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.  Could there be a more perfect Pieathalon pie?  Devilled eggs are such a stalwart of retro cooking and I’m pretty sure that no one has yet cooked from this classic of vegetarian cooking!   Then I realised that the recipe calls for a mashed potato pie crust.  Which I had not copied.  Without a recipe for the crust, I could not send it to someone else to cook.  But I could cook it myself and invent my own mashed potato crust!

And it’s only proper after all.  Do you think any of those athletes you just watched in the Olympics came in cold?  No way!  They practiced!  So, consider this one of my warm-up heats to get myself rmatch ready for Pieathalon!

The Mashed Potato Crust

Let’s start with that mashed potato pie crust  I needed to invent.  I had some leftover mashed potato.  Which I pressed into the bottom and sides of some little pie dishes. Oh yes, I decided to make individual devilled egg pies.

I then brushed these with a little bit of melted butter and popped them into the oven at 180C until the edges started to go brown and crispy, around 15 minutes.

Crust done!

Next up was the sauce that drew me to this recipe in the first place.  It is a white sauce with horseradish, mustard and dill.  I know there is no Scandinavian blood in my veins but these flavours absolutely sing to me.  I used the very last of the horseradish I had harvested from our garden.  The mustard and dill came from the supermarket and greengrocer respectively. I spooned the sauce into the bottom of the pie dishes:

I added some halved hard-boiled eggs.

And I spooned some more of the sauce over the top and popped the pies into the oven until the sauce was golden brown on top!

Devilled Egg Pie – The Recipe

Mollie Katzen gives two versions of this dish.  I made the hard-boiled egg version but I am also keen to try the fresh egg version.  I also think she missed a bit of a trick here – why not make a devilled egg, devilled egg pie?  I am going to make MY version very soon – stay tuned!

Devilled Egg Pie – The Verdict

These weren’t devilled eggs as we know them but the flavours were certainly devilled egg adjacent.  The mix of the mashed potatoes, the sauce and the eggs was delicious and just about the most comforting thing I have eaten all year!   The hardest thing about making them was actually having leftover mashed potatoes!  I’ll certainly be making these again!

Oh, and the exact same night I made these, I got an email from Yinzerella about Pieathalon 2021.  It’s coming…