Black Pudding and Chorizo Scotch Quails Eggs

July 14, 2014

Black Pudding and Chorizo Scotch Quails Eggs

A month or so ago my mother in law came from a holiday in Cornwall home bearing gifts - 3 goose eggs and 12 quails eggs.

Kids!

Lauren was desperate to try both and I'm afraid the above is what she opted for - a little and large (and a quails eggs fail omelette) fried egg with some milk bread and butter - there's no accounting for the culinary delights of the 9 year old!

I thought the quails eggs deserved something better, so I lightly boiled them for just under 3 minutes and delicately peeled them - definitely not a job for the faint hearted! I had just under 100g black pudding, a couple of fairly large pork sausages and a left over piece of British chorizo which we hadn't liked that much - it was heavy with a bitter paprika taste and it was extremely spicy. You really could use any combination you like, although if you are using black pudding or chorizo you need the pork sausages to make the mixture malleable enough to form the meat around the eggs, but you could just as easily use a flavoured sausages or flavour and season your own sausage meat.

I added the meats to my food processor and whizzed them until they were fairly smooth. Chorizo is quite chunky so some larger pieces may remain. It was a messy job taking a small handful of the meat and forming it around the eggs, not so thin that there are gaps, but not too thick that they wont cook through. A bit of flour on the your hands will help the shaping. Next I whizzed up a stale ciabatta to make some fairly rustic looking breadcrumbs, you can use some normal plain white bread but I love the texture you get from ciabatta or sour dough crumbs. Put the crumbs onto a flat plate or bowl. In another bowl whisk a couple of hens eggs. Another messy job, take each scotch egg and coat in the egg mix. Next transfer to the crumbs and roll until covered, then repeat so the egg is double coated in egg and crumbs. Set to rest on a baking tray covered in grease proof paper.

When you have double coated all the scotch eggs, you can cook them. I deep fried mine to get a fantastically crispy outside and then heated them in a medium heat oven just before serving later in the day.
They retained all their crispness, they were rich and spicy, crisp on the outside and soft and eggy on the inside.

You could toss the breadcrumbs in oil before coating, or spray the eggs with oil after coating and bake in a medium heat oven until crisp and browned or even healthier bake without oil for a toasted effect, instead of deep frying.

You can of course use hens or duck eggs rather then fiddling with quails eggs, but you will need to boil them for about 6 - 7 minutes and you will need to increase your portion of sausage mix. They will probably end up being quite large.

We served ours as a starter with a salad and some sweet chilli sauce and as astarter to a lovely summery 3 course meal.