Eggs farcis (breaded egg and veggie balls)

There are a lot of really delicious egg dishes in From the Hearth. This one creates delicious fried balls with chard and mushrooms using hard-boiled eggs. These would be perfect for appetizers or as a veggie-filled side dish.

I’ve modified the instructions a bit to fill in some missing steps.

While this is called “farcis”, the eggs are not stuffed in the regular sense. It’s more that they comprise part of a sort of vegetable-based “forcemeat”. Check out the other “farci” or stuffed dishes we’ve attempted, including cucumber and cabbage.

Ingredients

6 hard-boiled eggs
1 cup greens (chard or spinach)
2 tbsp mushrooms, chopped
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tbsp mixed parsley, sorrel and chervil, finely minced
pinch ground nutmeg

Coating:
flour 
1 beaten egg 
fine bread crumbs

Frying: 
butter

I only had parsley (not sorrel or chervil) and used beet tops as my greens.

Instructions

Cook greens in boiling water for 3-4 minutes. Drain well, and chop coarsely. Sauté in butter to remove moisture, then let cool. 

Cut eggs in half. Scoop out yolks into mixing bowl. (Keep whites). Mash egg yolks together with the greens, mushrooms, herbs, and seasonings. 

Form mixture into small balls. Flour balls, coat with beaten egg, and roll in bread crumbs. Fry in butter until golden brown. 

Cut egg whites in strips and serve as a side dish (optionally in a small amount of your favourite sauce). 

These were quite sticky balls to form. This is likely in part because my default is soft boiled eggs, so the yolks were not fully cooked. I was surprised that the seemingly small number of cooked yolks kept all that other stuff bound together.

I did not watch these closely enough – they got a little too dark.

The Verdict

These were pretty delicious little morsels. The name of the dish is a bit deceiving – you would not think “eggs” when eating the balls. The added egg white strips were good too, but didn’t really go together with the balls in a logical way. Definitely would make this again!

Did you make this? What would you do with the egg whites? Leave a comment!