Confiletas Mini Vol Au Vent Pastry Shells x 12
$9.95
Hand-packed and dispatched from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, with free delivery Australia-wide on orders over $100.
By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.
Curried egg vol-au-vents make 24 one-bite canapes in about 30 minutes. Six hard-boiled eggs, mayonnaise and curry powder bloomed in butter go into crisp 38mm puff pastry shells, filled shortly before serving so the pastry stays crisp.
Curried egg holds its shape in pastry and collapses in bread
Curried egg sandwiches are an Australian party fixture, and they are also the plate that looks tired by the time most people get to it. The filling is soft and slightly wet by design. Soft white bread absorbs that, goes translucent at the edges, and a stack of triangles slumps sideways inside an hour.
A baked pastry case fixes both problems at once. The walls hold the filling up instead of drinking it in, so the shape survives a while on the bench, and the pastry supplies the crunch that curried egg has never had. It also turns a sandwich into something you can hand around while the other hand is holding a glass.
The case doing the work is the 38mm mini from the Confiletas mini vol-au-vent shells range, twelve to a pack for under $10. They arrive fully baked and shelf stable, so nothing is rolled, chilled, cut or blind baked. Two packs is 24 shells, and 24 shells is what six eggs fills. That is the recipe in one line: boil six eggs, open two packs.
The curry powder goes into warm butter, not straight into the mayonnaise
This is the step that separates curried egg from dusty egg. Curry powder is ground seed, bark and root, and a lot of what makes turmeric, coriander, cumin and fenugreek taste of anything is held in compounds that dissolve in fat, not in water. Stirred raw into cold mayonnaise they stay locked up, so what you taste is powder: chalky, faintly bitter, sitting on the tongue.
Melt the butter, take the pan off the heat, and stir the powder into it for 30 to 60 seconds. It shifts from mustard yellow to a deeper gold and the kitchen starts to smell like cooking rather than like a spice jar. Let it cool, then fold it through the mayonnaise. Same ingredients, a filling that tastes twice as good.
Method
Method
- Sit the eggs in a saucepan in a single layer and cover them with cold water by 2cm. Bring to the boil over high heat, then turn it down to a steady simmer and set a timer for 8 minutes from the moment it boiled.
- Fill a bowl with cold water and ice. At 8 minutes lift the eggs straight into it for 5 minutes. The cold stops the cooking, keeps the yolk gold instead of grey ringed, and shrinks the egg away from the shell.
- Peel the eggs under a running tap, starting at the fat end where the air pocket sits, then pat them dry. Water clinging to a peeled egg is water in your filling.
- Melt the butter with the olive oil in a small pan over low heat. Take it off the heat, stir in the curry powder, and keep stirring for 30 to 60 seconds until it smells cooked rather than raw. Leave it to cool to room temperature. Hot curry butter will split cold mayonnaise.
- Halve the eggs and separate the yolks from the whites. Mash the yolks in a bowl with the mayonnaise, the mustard and the cooled curry butter until it is smooth and one even colour.
- Chop the whites by hand into 5mm dice and fold them through, then the chutney, the chives and a squeeze of lemon. Season with salt flakes and pepper. Taste it now: it wants to be sharper and saltier than feels comfortable, because pastry mutes both.
- Check the texture before it goes near a shell. It should mound on a teaspoon and hold that shape for a few seconds. If it slumps it is too wet for pastry, and more finely chopped white will bring it back. Chill it for 20 minutes either way.
- Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Sit the shells on a dry tray, warm them for 4 minutes, then leave them on the bench until they are properly cool. This drives out any moisture the pack has picked up and is the difference between a shell that shatters and one that bends.
- Spoon a heaped teaspoon of filling into each shell, mounded rather than levelled off. Finish with chive tips, a pinch of paprika or chilli flakes and a grind of pepper, and get them onto the table inside the hour.
Curried egg questions we get asked
How do you stop curried egg going watery?
Dry the peeled eggs properly, because the water clinging to them ends up in the bowl. Add the mayonnaise in stages and stop before you think you should, since too much of it is the usual cause. And chop the whites rather than mashing everything together, because mashed white breaks down and releases moisture as it sits.
How long does curried egg keep in the fridge?
Two days covered, three at most. Hard-boiled eggs left in the shell keep about a week, so boiling ahead and mixing on the day is the safer way to get a head start. Once the filling is in pastry, think in hours rather than days: the shells soften long before the filling turns.
What curry powder is best for curried egg?
A mild or Madras blend, turmeric forward, nothing built for heat. Curried egg is a gentle thing and a vindaloo-style powder walks all over it. Buy it in a small tin and use it up, because ground spice fades once the jar is open, and a tired powder is the other reason curried egg tastes dusty. If curry blends interest you beyond the supermarket tin, the eat.art Curries of Origin giftset is a set worth working through.
Can you make curried egg without mayonnaise?
Yes. Thick Greek yoghurt works on its own or half and half with mayonnaise, for a sharper, lighter filling. Drain it in a sieve for 20 minutes first or it will be too loose for pastry. Mashed avocado with lemon does the same job, though it has to be assembled and eaten the same afternoon. Either way keep the bloomed curry butter, because that is where the flavour lives.
Two packs of shells and half an hour is the whole job. The Confiletas range runs from these 38mm minis to the 75mm large shells and on to sweet and savoury tart cases, all under $10 a pack, and there is more on matching shell to filling in our guide to which Confiletas case suits which canape. If you would rather send the food than make it, the Christmas hampers are packed by hand in Corio. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post, and shipping is free Australia-wide over $100.
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