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Monday, 24 May 2010

Eggs everywhere...


I'll never make a food blogger! For a start I don't cook very often - I earn the living, OH does the cooking. But he's been cooking practically every day for the last 18 years or so, and I feel it's time he had the occasional break. So the idea is that, when I'm home, I'll cook on Saturdays, and younger son thinks he might do a regular slot as well.

Unfortunately, this week I pretty much forgot about it and spent most of Saturday in the garden, cleaning chicken houses and planting strawberries - I did offer, but the thing that needed using up was sausages, so OH very nobly made toad-in-the-hole with ratatouille - it was very good. Since I offered to take up the spatula again my contributions have mostly involved eggs, since we have a glut, and I do a mean soufflé, if I say so myself. Last weekend I did potato and fennel soup, thanks to the River Cottage May newsletter and to our local Green Shop, which had lovely fennel and excellent spelt bread, followed by Scotch eggs. In the past I've always made these by deep-frying them, something I'm not entirely happy about - it uses a lot of oil, the end result is a bit greasy for my taste and it no doubt ups the calory content. This time, though, I baked the eggs in the oven and we all really liked them.

Hard boil as many eggs as you want, cooling them as soon as they are done and peeling them - I like to do it under a trickle of water from the cold tap, which helps to loosen the shell. I used sausages for the coating, splitting the skin and peeling it off - it took about one and a half sausages per egg. Wrap the sausage meat round the egg, sealing all the cracks, then dip the egg into beaten egg, and then into fresh breadcrumbs. The bake in the oven at 200 C for about half an hour. Let them cool a bit before serving, it intensifies the flavour of the sausage - best with salad, but in my student days I liked them with baked beans.

The other reason why I'll never make a food blogger is that I don't take pictures of things. I'll try to do better in future.

1 comment:

Elizabeth Musgrave said...

I envy you the glut of eggs! We have one hen a new mother and another three out of four trying to be broody and being determinedly lifted off every day. Hence serious shortage of eggs! I love scotch eggs and might have to try this. The main reason I gave them up was the deep frying so you have tempted me to have another go.