Hard Boiled Eggs, Carmelized Onions + Cucumbers with Yogurt and Mint

Alexa Karolinski’s Egg Salad + Yogurt Cucumbers

  • Alexa Karolinski’s Egg Salad + Yogurt Cucumbers
    Oma and bella, video still
  • Alexa Karolinski’s Egg Salad + Yogurt Cucumbers
    Spreads from the cookbook, Oma & Bella, illustrations by Joana Avillez
  • Alexa Karolinski’s Egg Salad + Yogurt Cucumbers
    Illustration by Joana Avillez from the cookbook, Oma & Bella
  • Alexa Karolinski’s Egg Salad + Yogurt Cucumbers
    Illustration by Joana Avillez from the cookbook, Oma & Bella
  • Alexa Karolinski’s Egg Salad + Yogurt Cucumbers

NOTES

A shockingly delicious and upscale take on a classic, not so delicious salad, this rich onion and egg salad knocked my socks off. Mayo-free, this is a new take on an old-world dish. Serve with really great bread — if you want to go the Jewish deli route, make it a pumpernickel or a rye.

The cucumber salad is clean and simple and actually paired really well with the egg salad. These two are excellent candidates for a picnic with grandma.

INSTRUCTIONS

For the Chopped Egg Salad:

Add the yellow onions and half of the white onion to a sauté pan and cover in vegetable oil. Cook over very low heat for approximately 45 minutes, until golden brown and translucent. Set onions aside and save the oil for later.

Place the eggs in a large saucepan and and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer and cook eggs for 10 minutes. Remove eggs from the pot using a slotted spoon. Once they are cool, peel and finely chop the eggs.

Transfer eggs, fried onions, and remaining white onion to a large bowl and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

For the Cucumber Salad:

Combine shallots and red wine vinegar in a small bowl and let sit for 10 minutes.

Taste the cucumber–if the peel is bitter, remove with a vegetable peeler. Slice the cucumber into ¼-inch rounds using a mandoline.

Combine shallots, cucumber, yogurt, salt, and pepper. Season with vinegar and more salt and pepper to taste.

RECIPE

DIFFICULTY

EASY

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SERVES

6

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PREP TIME

15 MINS

Chopped Egg Salad

  • 6  
     
    yellow onions
  • 1  
     
    large white onion
  •  
     
    vegetable oil
  • 6  
     
    large organic eggs
  •  
     
    kosher salt, to taste
  •  
     
    freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Cucumber Salad

  • 1  
     
    shallot, finely chopped
  • 1  
    tsp 
    red wine vinegar
  • 1  
     
    large seedless cucumber
  • 2  
    tbsp 
    plain yogurt or quark
  • 1  
    tsp 
    kosher salt
  • 1/4  
    tsp 
    freshly ground black pepper

INSTRUCTIONS

For the Chopped Egg Salad:

Add the yellow onions and half of the white onion to a sauté pan and cover in vegetable oil. Cook over very low heat for approximately 45 minutes, until golden brown and translucent. Set onions aside and save the oil for later.

Place the eggs in a large saucepan and and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer and cook eggs for 10 minutes. Remove eggs from the pot using a slotted spoon. Once they are cool, peel and finely chop the eggs.

Transfer eggs, fried onions, and remaining white onion to a large bowl and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

For the Cucumber Salad:

Combine shallots and red wine vinegar in a small bowl and let sit for 10 minutes.

Taste the cucumber–if the peel is bitter, remove with a vegetable peeler. Slice the cucumber into ¼-inch rounds using a mandoline.

Combine shallots, cucumber, yogurt, salt, and pepper. Season with vinegar and more salt and pepper to taste.

If you grew up eating Jewish food, you might not be itching to eat more of it. But Alexa Karolinski is here to prove that when it’s done right, it’s not only delicious, but a tradition worthy of great celebration. Alexa is a filmmaker-cum-cookbook author whose documentary Oma & Bella tells the story of her Holocaust survivor grandmother (Oma, or Regina) and best friend Bella through their rituals of preparing elaborate homemade meals. Food is the ultimate pleasure for these endearing characters, but it is also a vital link to their difficult history. They take pride in their mastery of Jewish food and it plays no small role in the formation of their identity.  Alexa, Berlin-born but based in Los Angeles, decided a film was not enough. She wanted to immortalize the recipes themselves. So she, her Oma and best friend Bella took on a trans-Atlantic publishing project that had Alexa taking notes and scouring Los Angeles’ Orthodox markets for fresh herring in an effort to do her grandmother’s food justice. The result is a an artfully illustrated compendium (illustrations by Joana Avillez) from Gefilte fish to chopped liver, and yes, there are a couple salads in there for good measure. Alexa’s take-away? “Making good chicken soup is an art.” Amen, sister.

Alexa Karolinski in Her own words

Julia Sherman: Tell me how you came to make Oma and Bella?

Alexa Karolinski: I was freelancing in Berlin at the time and decided I wanted to learn how to cook. At the time all I could really make was scrambled eggs, and who better to teach me than my grandmother and her best friend and housemate Bella…that’s when I started cooking with them and writing the recipes down. Since they cooked from memory, I had to get them to use simple household products so I could later convert them into measurements. Real glasses, spoons etc. After a couple of months I moved to NY to start an MFA in Social Documentary Filmmaking and I decided to make my thesis film about them. After completing it two years later, I also got to finish the cookbook.

JS: You are a filmmaker by training, but you really pulled this cookbook together on your own. What was the biggest challenge you faced in that aspect of the project?

AK: Creatively, it was definitely getting the measurements right. I cooked their food for months on my own to see if they worked. And if it tasted like their food. I used to tell Bella that she wasn’t giving me all the information I needed, and her reply was that she could only give me 98%– I needed to find the last 2% on my own.

JS: And what about the choice to self-publish?

AK: I launched a kick-starter to finish my film and I promised people a cookbook as one of the gifts. Self-publishing was really a means to an end, because I couldn’t find a publishing house that wanted to make the book in the way that I had envisioned it. I used some of that money to self-publish, but I was heavily relying on my friends to help for very little–my friend James and my husband Basil with the editing, and Joana with the beautiful illustrations.

JS: I have a very close relationship with my Nana, and I have used her in my work a lot, but I was always afraid that my love for her personally would cloud my vision and prevent me from making something that was interesting to people who didn’t already adore her. Is that something you ever considered?

AK: Absolutely. But I think the same could be said for any project you truly care about. For me, my family screening was really important–hearing my brother say that the way you see them on screen is the way they really are. I think that if you make a personal project, it’s okay that your judgement isn’t objective. What was important to me was that I would make something that felt real.

JS: What do you want people to understand about Jewish food?

AK: Making good chicken soup is an art.

JS: What were some of the most difficult recipes to develop and test, and how did you work with your grandma to make sure the information was accurate?

AK: Aspic was difficult, because I find it disgusting. The smell when you melt the calve’s feet is like no other and I nearly puked many times, much to the pleasure of my grandmother and Bella. I think more than exact accuracy I had to actually learn how to cook. So much taste when you cook is dependent on the quality of the food and the time of year for the fruits and vegetables. It was about learning what to add more of to make it taste right and finding a way to write that down for others. That is why most recipes tell the reader to taste the food various times within a recipe.

When I was in the midst of writing the book, I spent three days cooking almost everything from the book and invited 20 friends over to try everything. Before they arrived my grandmother and Bella came by and tasted everything, approved most of it, and corrected other dishes.

JS: What role does cooking play in your life as an artist?

AK: I cook a lot and I love going to the market looking, smelling, and touching food. That is important to me as a human in the world and as an artist. Different foods are a basic part of life, so I love those foods as well as textures, colors, and things I haven’t seen before.

JS: Tell me a little about the project you are working on now–the new film.

AK: It’s a film about German identity through my personal experiences of growing up Jewish in Germany as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. I’ve often felt that I grew up with other sensibilities to most of my non-Jewish German friends in Berlin. It’s going to be a film exploring the place and the people I grew up in and with.