Scotch Eggs

18 May
Not all eggs are equal. Mabel can lay an occasional Frankenegg, while Betty's are always small and white

Not all eggs are equal. Mabel can lay an occasional Frankenegg, while Betty’s are always small and white

I keep hens. So I have a plentiful supply of fresh eggs.

I am Scottish and live in Scotland.

So the only surprise is that it’s taken this long to write about Scotch Eggs.

Chooks having an afternoon nap

Chooks having an afternoon nap

Firstly a word or two about fresh eggs. The very freshest of fresh eggs are not the eggs you want to hard boil. When eggs are straight out of the hen, the membrane between the egg white and the shell is tight up next to the shell, making them difficult to peel. As the days go by, air will permeate through the egg shell, creating a teeny tiny space between shell and membrane and the bubble space you will sometimes find when you have hard boiled an egg.

Do yourself a favour, poach or fry those extra fresh eggs, they’ll be much nicer.

But back to the Scotch Eggs. I haven’t identified precise quantities here. Eggs are different sizes and some will need more sausage to cover them than others. Oh, and you might want a really thick coating of sausage. Or not.

  • eggs
  • some flour
  • some getting on for stale bread (or use up those posh japanese panko breadcrumbs you were persuaded to buy and still have hanging around in your cupboard)
  • sausage meat (about 1 1/2 sausages per egg)
  • black pudding (about a quarter of a slice per egg)
  • herbs, spices, salt and pepper
  1. Hard boil your eggs – ideally so they have a slightly squishy bit in the middle of the yolk. You may have your own fool proof method, but if not, try my method at the bottom of this blog.
  2. While the eggs are boiling, make your crunchy breadcrumbs. Cut some bread into wee cubes, about 1cm across. Place the cubes onto a baking tray and put them in a low oven to dry out and crisp up a bit. Once they are dried, smash them up – I do this by putting them in a high sided bowl and bashing them with the end of a rolling pin. You might prefer to put them in a plastic bag and pretend they are a disliked work colleague.
  3. Break an extra egg into a soup bowl and lightly beat it with a fork. Leave the beaten egg in this bowl
  4. Pour some flour into another soup bowl
  5. Place the breadcrumbs into a soup bowl too. you don’t have to use soup bowls of course, but I find a wide based bowl is easier than anything else.
  6. If you are using sausages, unpeel them into a bowl and add whatever herbs and spices you want to use (I added some smoked paprika and ground black pepper). Then chop up the black pudding nice and fine and using your hands, smoosh the black pudding and the sausage meat together
  7. Take big chunks of the sausagey mixture and pat it out till it forms a sausage meat blanket, about 1/2cm thick
  8. Now peel your eggs, then one by one make your scotch eggs
  9. Dip the egg in the beaten egg
  10. Roll the egg in flour
  11. Place the egg on a sausage blanket and wrap it up in, squooshing it together so there are no gaps
  12. Dip the sausage eggy ball in more beaten egg
  13. Roll the egg in breadcrumbs
  14. Place the breadcrumb coated sausagey eggy ball on a baking tray
  15. Repeat till you’ve run out eggs or sausage or the will to live
  16. Bake in a medium – hot oven (about GM5 or 6) for about 20 – 30 mins, or until they look and sound cooked
  17. Serve warm, or cold, with salad. Yes, salad. Don’t be a salad dodger!
You need hard boiled eggs

You need hard boiled eggs

Make your own scrunchy breadcrumbs

Make your own scrunchy breadcrumbs

Beaten up eggy for dipping to make the flour and breadcrumbs stick

Beaten up eggy for dipping to make the flour and breadcrumbs stick

Make blankets of sausage meat mixture to wrap your eggs

Make blankets of sausage meat mixture to wrap your eggs

Scotch eggs, ready for the oven

I'm so proud of my ladies, laying me such tasty treats!

I’m so proud of my ladies, laying me such tasty treats!

How to boil an egg

  1. Keep your eggs at room temperature (I don’t think they need to be kept in a fridge, unless you have an outrageously warm kitchen)
  2. Put enough water in a pan so that the eggs you want to boil will be covered with water (and about 1cm more). The water should be about room temperature too.
  3. Place the eggs into the pan of water
  4. Put the water and eggs onto a hotplate, and bring to the boil
  5. Once the water is boiling, turn the heat down slightly so that it continues to boil, but doesn’t splutter everywhere
  6. Set the timer to 4 minutes
  7. Use your 4 minutes wisely – put ice and water into a bowl, big enough that your eggs will fit in it
  8. When the timer goes off, lift each egg out and pop it into the cold icy water
Eggs in icy water

Eggs in icy water

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Wordless Wednesday

15 May

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Wordless Wednesday

30 Apr

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Thanks Mr Hollywood

21 Apr

I made bread today.

White cob loaf

White cob loaf

I make bread 2 or 3 times a week, but it’s usually in a breadmaker. I’m pretty good at making bread maker bread into something very tasty. The trick is (as ever) to start with the best ingredients. And when your ingredients are just flour, oil and water (ok and some yeast, milk powder, sugar and salt) you want to make sure you have the best flour you can find.

Stoneground flour with added seeds is my flour of choice, from Bacheldre Mill. I know, it seems ridiculous to buy flour from Wales, and cause it to be shipped up to the Clyde Valley. But it’s delicious. And I don’t necessarily like to promote amazon, but you can subscribe to Bacheldre Mill flour on amazon and get it automatically delivered to you as often as you want, and for about the same price as you’d pay at your local supermarket for an inferior mass-produced product.

One of the things I discovered early on is that you need about 20% more water than you expect when you are using stoneground flour. I don’t know why. You just do. Trust me on this.

Anyway, as I said, today I made bread. By hand, not in the breadmaker. And not a sourdough. I’ll come back to sourdough, perhaps in the summer, but for now I’m afraid I’ve killed my starter, so more sourdough will just have to wait till I can be bothered nurturing a jar of gloop again.

This morning I was inspired by that lovely Mr Hollywood. You know, him with the gorgeous twinkly blue eyes, and the assertive kneading hands. And the knowledge, held within his hands as much as his brain, on how to bake. As someone who has loved baking all my life, I appreciate what that lovely Mr Hollywood has to offer. OK, as a warm blooded woman I appreciate what that Mr Hollywood has to offer!

My mother sent me the free Hollywood Bakes booklets she’d got in the weekend Telegraph, and it seemed sensible to start at the beginning, with a white cob loaf. But I’m not very good at following recipes to the letter, and I don’t have weighing scales which enable me to weigh 10g of yeast, so my white cob loaf is I guess a Valley Variation of Mr Hollywood’s recipe.

But it works.

It works brilliantly.

I will be making this bread again. And again. So should you.

White cob loaf

  • 500g strong white flour, preferably stoneground
  • 2tsp instant yeast, plus a wee bit more
  • 1 lge tsp Maldon sea salt
  • about 30g softened butter
  • 350ml tepid water
  1. Tip the flour into a very large mixing bowl. If you have one of those really big wide mixing bowls, that is what you should use
  2. Add the salt to one side of the bowl and the yeast to the other
  3. Add the butter and 3/4 water in the middle and start mixing it around with your fingers, using them like a paddle
  4. You’re aiming to incorporate all of the flour into the doughy mixture around your fingers – you may need to add all of the water, but perhaps not, depending on your flour. Or the where the moon is in its cycle. Or the equinox. Or if you live next door to a witch. Bread is fickle like that.
  5. When the dough has come together and is soft (not too stiff, and not too soggy, although soggy is better than stiff in this instance) clean the inside of the bowl with the dough.
  6. Coat your work surface with a little olive oil (or whatever unflavoured oil) and tip the dough onto it.
  7. Knead for around 5-10 minutes until the dough seems to form a soft smooth skin, and it all feels softer and silky to the touch
  8. Oil a large bowl and place the dough in there, cover with cling film. Or a shower cap if you’ve been away in a hotel recently and have taken the free shower cap with you
  9. Leave to rise in a warm place, if you have one.
  10. Wait
  11. Go and do other things
  12. Do some more
  13. Once it has doubled in size you can get going again.
  14. Line a baking tray with parchment, or butter it with a leftover butter paper
  15. Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface and shape it into a ball by repeatedly folding it inwards with your hand. Once all the air is knocked out of it and the dough is smooth, form it into a round, smooth cob (dome) shape
  16. Put the dough on the prepared baking sheet and leave to prove for about an hour. If you can, cover it, but you don’t want anything that will touch the surface of the dough or it might rip the skin off the dough when you remove it
  17. When it’s nearly ready, pre-heat your oven to 450F / 230C / GM8.
  18. Once the dough has doubled in size again test to see if it springs back quickly if you prod it gently with a finger. If it does, you’re ready. If not, leave it a bit longer. Or cry.
  19. Fill a roasting tray half full with water and place it in the bottom of your hot hot hot oven
  20. Dust the dough with some flour and the slash its top deeply with a knife. Don’t be scared, just do it.
  21. Pop your bread in the oven and bake for 30 mins, or until it’s cooked through and sounds hollow when tapped on the base.
  22. Cool on a wire rack

Eat with unsalted butter. Or cheese and pickle. Or ham. Or really with anything you want. It will be delicious.

Mr Hollywood's white cob loaf

Mr Hollywood’s white cob loaf

The dough, ready to rise for a few hours

The dough, ready to rise for a few hours

A lightly floured surface, ready for the dough

A lightly floured surface, ready for the dough

A perfect pillow of dough

A perfect pillow of dough

After 30mins in a hot hot hot oven it should look a bit like this

After 30mins in a hot hot hot oven it should look a bit like this

 

 

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Apple spice muffins

10 Mar

I woke at 6.30 this morning. The Captain was awake and had brought me a cup of Earl Grey. Generally on a Sunday I don’t drink Earl Grey at 6.30am, but the thought was kind.

It was a dull spring day, nothing special.

I didn’t drink the tea, but fell back into a deep sleep till after 9am, when the quality of the light in the room had changed dramatically – there was an inch of snow on the ground and it was still falling.

Spring flowers poking through the snow

Spring flowers poking through the snow

An hour later, after a breakfast of local bacon in a home-made roll, it had cleared up enough for me to venture outside. The plan today was to sort out the greenhouse – perfect snowy weather activity you’d think. Except that the trouble with clearing a greenhouse is that you need somewhere to clear it to, and that somewhere is down the bottom of the garden. And by this time it was blowing a blizzard again.

So, what’s a girl to do but revert to type, retreat indoors and bake?

We had some spare apples and I have some of the loveliest cinnamon ever, which I suspect won’t be so lovely for evermore. Apple spice muffins were the answer.

Apple spice muffins

Prepare muffin tins and preheat oven to 400F / 375C / GM6.

  • 2oz porridge oats
  • 7oz plain flour
  • 3tsp baking powder
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1.5 tsp cinnamon
  • a shake each of ground cloves and ground ginger
  • 3oz caster sugar
  • 1 egg
  • a large apple, peeled, cored and chopped finely
  • 6fl oz milk
  • 2fl oz veg oil

And for the topping

  • 3TBsp soft brown sugar
  • 2oz walnuts, chopped
  1. Mix the topping ingredients together and put to one side
  2. Mix together the porridge oats, flour, baking powder, spices and salt
  3. In another bowl whisk  together the egg, milk and oil and then add the chopped apple
  4. Pour all the wet mixture into the dry and stir it till it’s all just combined
  5. Spoon into the prepared muffin tin (that probably means muffin cases in a muffin tin).
  6. Sprinkle a spoonful of topping on each muffin.
  7. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until the tops are light brown and the muffins spring back when you gently press them.
  8. Cool for a wee minute, then EAT.

 

Dry ingredients in a bowl

Dry ingredients in a bowl

 

Add an egg, without the feather

Add an egg, without the feather

 

Remember to sprinkle the scrumbly topping on your muffins

Remember to sprinkle the scrumbly topping on your muffins

They're ready when they are golden brown - so about 1 minute before these ones came out slightly burnt!

They’re ready when they are golden brown – so about 1 minute before these ones came out slightly burnt!

 

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My girls

9 Mar

So, we now have five hens: Achilles, Hector and Wee Tommy are hybrids (Lohmann Browns) who have been with us since the Autumn. They give us an egg each pretty much every day. We also now have Betty and Mabel, a white and a blue Wyandotte. They came to live with our girls a few weeks ago and have stubbornly refused to lay. Until now. This week we had FOUR eggs one day. I suspect it’s Big Mabel who is laying, not wee Betty. I can’t imagine that Betty can produce a full sized egg, and all four eggs were bigger than your average, with lovely deep yellow yolks.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we’re eating a lot of eggy dishes these days, and this afternoon will see the production of a souffle for the first time, probably a cheese souffle.

But for now, it’s time for pics of my girls, so here you go, a selection from the last few weeks.

2013-03-02 15.11.15

 

Moby has her eye on the girls

Moby has her eye on the girls

2013-03-02 15.10.38

Mabel isn’t sure about Moby

The girls huddling by the door

The girls huddling by the door

2013-03-02 13.00.37

2013-03-02 13.00.14

 

 

 

 

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Wordless Wednesday

20 Feb

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