I’ve been obsessing about Scotch eggs recently. A little late I know, trends these days move so fast that it’s often hard to keep up let alone lead the pack but here I am at last and I do think Easter is the right time for all things eggy.

I was lucky enough to meet @cookinboots Ravinder Bhogal recently and she cooked some delicious eggs coated in spicy pork jackets and so I finally decided to stop prevaricating and hit the kitchen.

I had some sausage meat left over from Christmas but plain minced fresh pork works just as well, then I needed was to spice it up. I chose rather traditional spices of sage, onion etc but added garlic and ginger to good effect.  Pimenton de la Vera would work well or curry paste if you have some in the fridge. You could do a Chinese version based on a pork dumpling stuffing so the seasonings would be soy,ginger, spring onion and a touch of sesame oil.

To coat the eggs I used Panko Japanese breadcrumbs, any white crumbs would be just fine and here too you can spice up your eggs by adding seeds or spices to the crumb to give a real burst of flavour. Some I’ve tried are sesame, mustard seed, cumin and black pepper.

Now to get cooking the eggs. And it’s this part of  making Scotch eggs that is really the only tricky bit. When I was a child the yolk of a Scotch egg was always hard boiled and more often than not had an unappetising greyish tint encircling it. I was watching Simon Hopkinson’s The Good Cook when I picked up the following tip: Place the eggs in a pan and cover with cold water, bring to a full boil and then switch off the heat. Now you cover the pan with a lid and leave the eggs in the water for 4 minutes. Lift them straight into a bowl of iced water and leave until cool. I followed his advice to the letter and as you can see below the yolks were perfect.

Oh and the quality of the eggs is all important I use Clarence Court Burford Browns http://www.clarencecourt.co.uk/

Spicy Scotch Eggs