scotch eggs – Witchypoos Kitchen

…The short answer is no. It will be the biggest super moon of 2020 and will be at its fullest here in the Midlands UK at around 3.30am(ish) Wednesday 8th April. I will share photos here. It is known as a pink moon because of early emerging flowers and pink moss, these names come from folklore. It is also commonly known as a fish moon, or an egg moon. Not sure about the fish name, but presumably the egg name comes from this time of year being when hens tend to start laying again after their winter sabbatical, and ties in with Ostara celebrations and Easter eggs.

Scotch party eggs, emphasis on the scotch!

I have quails, they are adorable and I’ve kept them for quite a few years. Quail eggs are expensive but the birds lay prolifically and I always have a glut. I once made a potato salad for a church barbeque lunch and announced “there are 50 quail eggs in there” I was very popular that day. So I boiled a couple of dozen or so, see previous blog, but 6 good size regular hen eggs are perfect. These are trying times here in lockdown and we need to use what we have. I happened to have some haggis and some pork, sage and onion stuffing in the back of the freezer. Haggis, OK because the beardy one loves it, but my argument is why so expensive, it’s poor food, like lamb shanks and all the other poor food that has been seemingly coated in gold by celebrity chefs driving prices up. So we buy haggis on sale, usually after Burns night when the supermarket sells it off, and put it in the freezer. But the stuffing was a spec savers moment when I thought I had picked up sausage meat. Both of these rolls weigh 454g each.

Put the meat and any flavouring you fancy into a bowl, I’m making a lot, but one roll of sausage meat would coat 4-6 regular eggs depending on how thick you like the coating, I prefer more scotch than egg. There was actually 25 quail eggs, which I shelled and rinsed. Little tip, quail eggs are a devil to peel when boiled from fresh, if you leave them a week to ten days before boiling they peel so much easier. Back to the meat, I’m adding nothing because haggis is a strong flavour, but you could add salt and pepper to taste, your favourite herbs, black pudding, some finely chopped garlic, chives, or my personal favourite, some ground fennel seeds. I worked out that around 35-40g of the meat mix would give me a fairly even coating, and weighed this much mix to see what it looked like, from there i measured by eye, making each meat portion as similar to the first as possible. 25 portions of meat.

Take a portion of meat and flatten it in your palm, put the egg in the middle and bring all sides up to meat, make sure to seal the meat around the egg and roll between two hands to get a good shape.

At this point put them into the fridge. This can be overnight, but a minimum of half an hour. A word about breadcrumbs for the coating. I am making mine from some left over homemade white bread. I don’t tend to buy white bread as I find the bought stuff tasteless and I’m not keen on putting into my family the stuff they put into the bread, but I make it because, well, cheese on toast doesn’t work on brown. And sometimes only cheese on toast will do. I am adding some wholemeal to mine for texture and flavour. If you buy yours, great, no problem, but please not those awful luminous orange things that are so far removed from bread… who wants to eat a scotch egg that looks like it has come from a petrol station mini shop? So it’s simple, put some bread into a food processor and whizz it until it’s crumbs. For this huge quantity I used 7 thin white slices and 2 wholemeal, and if you make too many they freeze well. Also you will need egg wash. I was using up a glut of little bantam eggs, and for this quantity I used 5. I find thet 2.5-3 bantam equals one large hen egg, so I would put one in a small bowl and whisk with a fork, use it up before breaking another because these are not times for wasting anything.

And before I show you my bread crumbs, can we take a moment to admire this gorgeous bunny bowl from TK Max.

Do you have a deep fat fryer? I don’t and life would be so much easier when making scotch eggs if I did, but it would be the only time it would get used. I use my smallest pan with just a couple of centimetres of oil to minimise wastage. So drop each egg into egg wash and with the same hand (always only this hand to keep the other clean) swirl it to cover with egg, then drop it (using the messy hand) into bread crumbs and thoroughly coat before placing carefully into the hot oil using a spoon. Give it just 2 minutes on each side, this is about creating colour and a crisp coating, not cooking through.

Don’t be tempted to overload the pan as the temperature will drop resulting in oily crumbs. Put the oven on to medium (gas 5-6 or your equivalent, look on Google) and grab yourself a baking tray, don’t grease it as there will be some residual oil in the eggs. Pop the eggs from the pan onto the tray, and when you have them all ready bake for 20-25 minutes.

You can of course cook them all the way through in a fryer, please make sure the meat is cooked, I prefer them cooked in the oven after browning.

I have completed the next stage of my cabin chest. The painting is finished, I taped up with masking tape and dark waxed the metalwork and wood before removing the tape. I’m really happy with it. Now to tackle the inside !

And so back to that glorious full super moon. Yes I am one of those strange people that stays up to photograph the moon at its fullest, it’s difficult when we cant go out to do it, but here it is from my back door. I only cut my hair on a full moon, there’s a little witchy tip for you, so I’m off to attempt a home trim.

Stay safe, stay home, wash your hands, wash everything. Speak soon xx

It is always important to me that I don’t waste food. Luckily I have dogs and hens who will eat left overs and the teens Guinea pigs enjoy veggie peelings and apple cores, but it is doubly important to be mindful of wastage now that we are in isolation. Not going out constantly to the shops puts less pressure on our key workers on the front line in supermarkets, food prep businesses and delivery drivers, to name but a few. This in turn means less ‘bodies’ out there potentially catching the virus and adding to the already way over stretched NHS. Bless them all, from refuse collectors to postal workers to surgeons to shop workers etc etc, bless you all. Anyway, with this in mind, I have looked through my fridge and taken out vegetables to which I would usually say “give them to the animals, I’ll buy fresh tomorrow” and made food for us, for the week. If something has todays use by date on it, cooking it and refrigerating gives an extra day or two. Today I made a cheese, leek and red onion pie for tomorrow, red cabbage good for a couple of days either hot or cold, enough carrots to last a few meals, yorkshire puddings for the freezer, and the start of quail scotch eggs. Here we go.

Perfect big yorkies.

I had a few eggs to use up, so I cracked them into a big jug and weighed them (300g), to this I added half a teaspoon of salt, 300g plain flour and 300ml milk. Whisk together vigorously for a minute or two then add a splash, and by splash I mean literally a tablespoon full and no more of cold water. Whisk again. You are aiming for a creamy consistency, think double cream but not clotted cream, yellowy colour to show you used good eggs, and lots of bubbles on the surface. Cover the jug and leave in the fridge or somewhere cool, overnight if you can or for a few hours at least. This gives time for the ‘science’ to happen, gluten stretching blah blah etc. We don’t need to know. When it’s time to cook, prep your tin and your oven. The first by adding a teaspoon of lard or a couple of mls of oil to each ‘portion’, the second by turning it on really high. Put the tin into the hot oven on the high shelf for about 5 minutes until you can hear the fat spitting and crackling, it needs to be super hot. Then give your batter one quick final whisk to wake it up before taking the tray out of the oven, and as quick as you can 1/3 to 1/2 fill each portion with batter.

You are aiming to see the fat bubble at the edges and begin to cook the batter as if you were frying a pancake. Then whack them back into the oven and turn it down just a little, mine goes to between 6-7 at this point. You know your own oven but look up conversions on Google. You will see I have used a tray intended for individual brownies, where usually its common to use a deep muffin pan or a shallow yorkshire pudding pan. It’s all about the shape. I did this once to make individual toad in the hole, and we liked the ‘loaf’ shaped puds, so I use it regularly now..

Approx 20 mins later, you should have this.

Freeze, when totally cold. Reheat from frozen in the oven at whatever temperature you are cooking your meal at, for approx 5-7 minutes.

My German Grannys red cabbage

She taught me a lot about cooking. She insisted on cooking at least a two course meal, sometimes more, for herself every single day of her life. She would lay the table with a hand embroidered cloth and good china. Everyday was an occasion and standards never slipped. I have her good china now, and I keep it in a glass cabinet, somehow I never feel that any food other than hers does it justice. This is her ‘ongoing’ red cabbage. You will need a pan large enough to fit in a whole cabbage which you slice quite finely removing outer leaves and the woody core. These make good guinea pig treats. To this add one or two chopped, cored, but not peeled eating apples, one or two tablespoons of vinegar, any kind but I prefer apple cider vinegar, salt to taste a cinnamon stick, a star anise and 2 table spoons of any sugar you have. Cover with water and put on a lid, then put it on the hob on a low heat. I use my wok burner as I make massive quantities, and turn it down to minimum, and there it lives, for as long as it takes. Grannys words, not mne. So you test after an hour or two, which means, you stab it to see if it is softening, and you make sure it isn’t boiling dry, it never does by the way. It gets better with age, and unlike other veggie, will not go mushy and over cooked. I do what Granny did, and cook it for 2 hours on day one, then leave to cool overnight and cook for another hour or so on day two. This lets all the flavours mix together.The peel on the apple disappears and the apple liquifies..Remove the star anise and cinnamon stick, Give it a stir and serve well drained. It stores well for a few days in a sealed tub in the fridge and is delicious with cold food too.

Old fashioned cheese pie.

I had some potatoes coming to the end of their shelf life, and my leeks were questionable to say the least, add this to cheese which was put away without being wrapped tightly so it had gone a bit hard and waxy, and I thought “cheese pie”

So peel and chop the potatoes and boil in salted water until tender enough for mashing. I’m not adding milk and only a little butter as I’m going to add lots of cheese. In the meantime, I top and tail the leeks and slice into quarters length ways. Have a good look to see if they need a wash inside as grit can climb up inside the leek during growing, then slice thinly and add to a pan with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil or butter. I also chopped up a couple of red onions which needed using and added these plus a handful of herbs from the garden and some black pepper, but no salt as the cheese will add some. Put a lid on it and saute at a really low heat for 30 mins. It should look fairly translucent.

if adding garlic, don’t add it yet as it might burn, but feel free to add garlic granules here

When it is fully cooked, and flavoured choose your pie tin or dish. Butter it well, really well. I used a pastry case as I make them and freeze them for when I make quiche in a hurry, so feel free to bake one for yourself. Judge how much mashed potato you will need to fill your pastry case or pie tin/dish and add this much to your leek mixture. Next go mad with the cheese, ok not mad but don’t be stingy, I added about a good handful per serving (6 in my case) plus some saved for on top. It’s worth adding an egg or two to bind the mixture if you are using a tin or dish, I didn’t as it will be contained in a pastry case. then pile the mix in its case/dish/tin and top with cheese and tomatoes if that’s your thing. Bake for 30 mins on medium until the egg, if you used it, is set and cooked, and the cheese is bubbling.

All this food for the week from ingredients which would have ended up in the pets or the composter. It has already been requested by the beardy one that I make scotch eggs this week, and I have quail eggs from the beautiful little ones so I boiled some today, just 30 seconds in boiling water

This made me think of decorating for Ostara, and as a change to my usual natural decorations, I went a bit ‘tacky’ mad. I thought I would be having all my family and their other halves around my table so a month or so ago I bought loads of cheap colourful decorations, but of course there will now just be the three of us. No excuse not to use the decorations though.

Do you know what? I look at these photos and I think “well they’re not insta-ready” but that pleases me. It is a home, not a photo set and I don’t know about you but I can see that family life goes on in my home. And while we are on the subject it goes on in my garden too…