By Passover in a pandemic. The strangest seder of my life, and I have presided over or attended forty-two seders, which is a sample size large enough to declare with statistical confidence that this one was unprecedented. It was just me and Marvin. Two people at a table set for two, reading from a Haggadah designed for twenty, telling the story of freedom to a man who cannot remember the story and a woman who is currently imprisoned in her own house by a virus.
The irony is not lost on me. I am an English teacher. I recognize irony the way a sommelier recognizes bad wine: immediately, viscerally, with a wince. We are telling the story of liberation on a night when we are locked in our homes. We are dipping parsley in salt water — the tears of slavery — while the world weeps from a plague. The parallels are so heavy-handed that if a student wrote them in a short story I would mark it as "too on the nose" and suggest more subtlety. But life is not subtle. Life is a seder during a plague. Life is matzah and hand sanitizer.
I made everything. The full spread. Brisket, matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, charoset, the whole table. For two people. The excess was not excess — it was defiance. The disease says Marvin is diminishing. The virus says the world is shrinking. The table says: look at this food. Look at this abundance. There is more here than two people can eat, and that is the point. We are not diminished. We are not shrinking. We are two people at a table with enough food for twenty, and the twenty are in our hearts, and the hearts are full, and the brisket is perfect.
David and Jennifer video-called during the seder. The grandchildren — Ethan, Sophie, Noah — waved at the screen. Ethan, six, read the Four Questions from his house in White Plains while I listened from mine in Oceanside. The same questions, in different houses, through a screen. "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Because everything is different. Because nothing is different. Because the questions are the same every year and the answers change every year and this year the answer is: because we are alone together, and together alone, and the matzah tastes the same through a screen as it does across a table.
Marvin ate the brisket. He ate the matzo ball soup. He did not follow the Haggadah. He followed me. I was enough. The seder was enough. Dayenu.
The brisket got all the glory that night, and the matzo ball soup did its faithful work, but it was the eggs on the seder plate that stopped me. The beitzah. You crack the shell and there it is—whole, simple, unchanged. I’ve been making hard-boiled eggs for forty-two seders, and they are the one thing on that table that never needs adjusting for how many people show up. Two people or twenty, the egg is the egg. So here is how I make them, because if you are going to set a defiant table, you start with the thing that is perfect every single time.
Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes (including cooling) | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 6 large eggs
- Water, enough to cover eggs by 1 inch
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar (optional, helps if shells crack)
- Ice, for ice bath
Instructions
- Prepare the eggs. Place eggs in a single layer in a saucepan or pot. Cover with cold water by about 1 inch. Add vinegar if using.
- Bring to a boil. Set the pot over medium-high heat and bring the water to a full rolling boil, uncovered.
- Cover and rest. As soon as the water reaches a rolling boil, remove the pot from the heat and cover with a tight-fitting lid. Let the eggs sit in the hot water for exactly 12 minutes for fully set yolks, or 10 minutes if you prefer a slightly softer center.
- Ice bath. While the eggs rest, prepare a large bowl filled with ice and cold water. When the timer goes off, use a slotted spoon to transfer the eggs immediately to the ice bath. Let them cool for at least 10 minutes.
- Peel and serve. Gently tap each egg on the counter and roll to crack the shell all over. Peel under cool running water, starting from the wider end where the air pocket sits. The shells should slip right off.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 72 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 5g | Carbs: 0g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 71mg