Scotch Eggs = Yes

So I was obviously going to call this post Scott's Eggs, but all joking aside, it just doesn't sound like something you'd want to eat, does it? Anyhoo, today I made some Scotch eggs for the first time. This was a recipe free event, guided only by the voices in my head, and what I thought seemed right. It's fair to say, they turned out pretty good. 

Hard boil some eggs, just long enough that the white won't fall apart when you crack them - about a 7 minute simmer. I did some some nice Free Range Burford Brown-shells,  as well as your standard Free Range Oganic Whites. Tasty food comes from happy animals.

Wrap each egg in some wonderful skin-healing sausage meat. I added plenty of salt pepper and thyme, but next go around will see more experimenting with mustard, and hopefully black pudding. 

Wrap 'em up, nice 'n' snug.

It's about this time that you'll want to make yourself some nice 'Meat-Goggles'. Don't hold back. You're worth it.

When they're all shapely, roll 'em in some plain flour.

Now you, or your glamorous assistant, can roll those bad boys around in plenty of bread crumbs. We found it best to wet your hands first, dampening the floured balls so you get a better crumb-to-stickyness ration. And yes, that is a technical term. I saw it in a maths book once.

They should now look a bit like this. Tempational.

As you can see from Ben's little man-paws, this isn't all hard work - it can be great fun too!

Once the little beasts are all crumby, put them in some hot-hot oil, and keep it all movin' around for a while.

Be careful not to set yourself on fire, but do cook them evenly. Once they're browning all over, after about 8 minutes, it's time to take those puppies out and let them dry off on some kitchen roll, or a nice thick tea towel if you're feeling wasteful. 

If you're as lucky as I was, they'll look as sexy-eggulitious as these.

Yes.

Yes.

No... Sorry.

And there you have it. I'd like to thank Ben for his assistance in the creation (and eating) of these tasty treats, and Emmett, for not biting my fingers off when he didn't get any.

Egg Porn.

My Pickled Egg Debut

I've always been wary of pickled eggs. While they might be a fairly good flavour of monster munch, I couldn't really get my head round eating a real life one (though probably something to do with my slow start with eggs in general). But having got to like other pickled things - particularly gherkins, which I now adore so much that I wanted to make my own this year (as can be witnessed here) - when Scott made his own pickled eggs, I couldn't really resist. What follows is my mini-exploration of the pickled egg:


Step 1: Scott reliably informs me that pickled eggs should consumed from within a packet of cheese and onion crisps. So, out comes the egg (from its pickling home - full of dill and garlic - in which it has been sat for at least a week)...


Step 2: ... and into the crisps it goes, with a general splash of vinegar to make it feel at home. It sits in here for a few minutes, while I eat at least one half of my sandwhich.


Step 3: I eat the egg, and it turns out it's not as scary as I thought. I particularly enjoyed the extra vinegary crisps and I did quite like the egg. My only criticism is that it was quite dense and eggy, and although I realise this makes me sound like a right wimp, maybe a little bit much for this moi all at once.


So there you have it. A little foray that turned out pretty OK. Wild, huh?

Christmas: over and out

The festive season was filled with food. Here is just one example of the tasty treats being sampled on Christmas day:


Blinis with soured cream and lumpfish caviar (to accompany present opening, of course).

Pham Sushi Crabathon

Pham Sushi rules:




Nuff said.

One sick carrot!

Whether you see some sort of octopus thing (like I do) or the Elephant Man or something else entirely (you’re sick), there is no denying that this is one weird carrot:

I do not like it, Sam-I-Am!



Gross!



Barf!

No, no, it’s awesome.

This year's harvest - part 2

This is horrendously overdue, considering it's now November, but back in September we picked some stuff we had been growing over the summer. It took a while, but the cucumbers finally got big enough to be used for something.

We also had a nice steady stream of tomatoes during August and September, which generally just got eaten raw or put in a nice and garlicky tomato and vegetable sauce for pasta - we never really had enough to do anything more long term with, but never mind.

Here is our motley assortment of cucumbers, the bulk of our crop (we picked a few more at the end of September, and there were some left on the plants even then but nothing really happened with them as they stopped growing - good to know for next year).

They looked pretty tasty and tempting to eat raw, but they all had the same destiny: the pickle jar. The recipe we followed was taken from the incredible Scandinavian Cookery Bible that I bought whilst on holiday ... I went for the easiest looking recipe, which basically consists of chopping and pouring over a pickling mixture of vinegar, water, salt and sugar.

I had some help with the chopping while I tried to figure out what a 'gill' of water was in UK measurements.

Then the sliced cucumbers were put in clean jars (which had once been the home of store-bought pickled gherkins).

with alternate layers of dill and mustard seed (we added quite a lot more of both than the recipe suggested - just for kicks).

Then the liquid went over the top...

... see how I match the demonstration in the book (!).

And here we have the product of our labours:

I have to admit to being slightly suspicious of the recipe and the mixture's ability to pickle, but I was totally wrong and the end result was better than I could have hoped for - salty and sweet, with a nice bit of residual crunch, and good for anything (I have particularly enjoyed them in cheese sandwiches). We have since pickled some cucumbers bought from the greengrocers (since the first batch didn't last that long). I think they will be a Donaldson fridge staple for a while to come.

I leave you with another good use for home-grown cucumbers: #1 - the false moustache