Unbought Delicacies

We had these for supper last night. The recipe is a slightly modified version of Elisabeth Luard's one in the April issue of Country Living magazine.

It's a good way of using up eggs - I'm getting nine or ten a day between the chickens and ducks, so that's quite a few! It's also an excellent way of using up stale bread/stale-ish bread and scraps of cheese and that odd bit of onion in the fridge :)

8 hard boiled eggs
about 150g breadcrumbs
2 large eggs
herbs of choice - I used herbes de Provence this time
teaspoon of made mustard - wholegrain,Dijon, English
1/2 small onion, grated
250 g of grated cheese
black pepper
good pinch of nutmeg

Serves 4

Shell the eggs and set aside. Set aside 2 handfuls of breadcrumbs to use for coating. Separate the eggs and put the yolks into a bowl with the rest of the ingredients, mix throughly to a softish paste type consistency; I had to use a bit of extra egg, but it just depends. Take a portion of the paste, use your thumb to make a depression in the middle and set the egg in, mould the rest of the paste around the egg until covered. Repeat for rest of eggs. When they all have their jackets on, whip up the egg white until frothy, coat each egg in egg white, then in crumbs, one ata time. Heat some sunflower oil or similr until hot, and gently fry until golden brown all over.
We had ours warm with potato salad and carrot, apple and pine nut salad, but I think they'd be lovely cold too. Very popular here, so will be making them again.

I think it's a nice adaptable recipe too - different mustard, different bread and cheese to ring the changes. It also made a version of the traditional Scoth Egg that Bean could eat, being vegetarian.