What's Cooking at Thyme To Cook?: Southwestern Deviled Eggs

For some reason, my entire life has been spent throwing out the yolks of hard cooked eggs. The hard cooked yolk, utterly disgusted me. This past week, I got a Cobb salad. I figured I could pick the yolk out and eat just the white. When the salad came, the egg was all chopped up, white and yolk together. Hmmm, I thought, do I bail on eating the egg completely, or go for it, and eat it w.the yolk. Well, I did the latter and really LOVED it! It was like an epiphany!
What had I been missing my whole life???? The yolk of hard cooked eggs, that's what!

I think over the past week, I've eaten over a dozen hard cooked eggs. I wanted to come up with a fancier way to eat them though. I knew that a fellow blogger, kettlebell nut and friend, Adrienne from Giryagirl.com liked to make deviled eggs. So I asked her what her favorite recipe was....her answer included using Beyond Organic Amasai, a fermented grass-fed dairy, very similar to buttermilk. I followed her lead and used that instead of mayonnaise and put my own spin on it, making the eggs Southwestern style.

Let's talk hard cooking eggs: it's so simple. Put eggs in a pot and cover them with cold water by 1 inch. Place on stove and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and cover pot. Allow the eggs to sit undisturbed for 10-12 minutes. Drain eggs from pot, and shock in cold water to halt cooking process. That is it! This method of cooking ensures an nice yellow yolk. No ugly green yolks here :)

Ingredients
4 hard cooked eggs, cut in half, lengthwise, whites reserved, yolks placed in a bowl
1 small leek, whites only, chopped and washed well
1 Fresno chile or other chile of choice, diced small
1/4 cup Plain Amasai or mayonnaise or Greek yogurt
2-3 TBS chopped cilantro
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp smoked paprika, plus more for dusting top of eggs
Juice of half a lime
Sea salt and pepper to taste

Technique
1. Saute the leeks and chiles until softened, over medium heat, seasoning with salt and pepper; add the leeks and chiles to the bowl with the yolks.

2. Using a fork, start to mash up the yolk into the leeks and chiles. Add in the remaining ingredients and mix well, using fork to mash up lumps of yolk. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as needed.