Tag: scotch egg

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Scotch Duck Egg Royale

I was up in Birmingham for a roundtable event and staying at the Edgbaston Park  Hotel which is on the University of Birmingham campus. This is a modern conference hotel with a restaurant and a bar, as well as meeting rooms.

I had the scotch duck egg royale; this was a soft boiled duck egg wrapped in a duck and truffle mince, breadcrumbs and deep fried. It was served on top of a leek and chive velouté with some dressed leaves.

Well, there was a lot of leaves on that plate, though difficult to make out there was a scotch egg on that plate.

I really liked the idea of this scotch egg, the description sounded delicious, despite the leaves, I think the food looked good. However, the execution wasn’t as good as the description or the way it looked.

This wasn’t the best scotch egg I’ve had in a restaurant. The best thing about the dish was the egg. It was a delicious soft boiled duck’s egg. The mince wrapping was quite thin, I think too thin. As a result, not only was the crumb was quite crunchy, the duck mince was crunchy as well in places. Also, I didn’t really get any truffle flavour in the duck mince.

The flavour of the velouté was overpowered by the addition of mustard. I couldn’t taste the leek or chives.

Yes, this wasn’t the best scotch egg I’ve had, it wasn’t awful, but it could have been so much better.

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I generally don’t do sandwiches…

I may have mentioned before that I generally don’t do sandwiches. 

I was working in Bristol in early January, and thinking about lunch. I had the intention of visiting Finzel Reach street food market. However, as I walked the long way there I saw that the queue for Sandwich Sandwich was almost non-existent.

I was tempted, though first I checked out St Nicks and Finzel Reach first. I then returned to Sandwich Sandwich and looked over the menu.

I decided I would have the rare roast beef sandwich, along with a scotch egg.

I was asked what I wanted and ordered my food. They have a range of sandwiches and I went with the beef sandwich. On granary bread I had  overnight roasted sirloin of beef, red onion, tomato, and horseradish mayo. I believe you can add extra fillings (or take some away).

I have read many reviews of the sandwiches from Sandwich Sandwich and one thing that many have said is the size of the fillings. Even so I was still surprised by how much filling I had in my sandwich.

I’ll be honest I had to eat it with a knife and fork. There was so much beef that it did in many ways overpower the rest of the sandwich. I felt the bread just disappeared into the beef. The beef was tasty, and I enjoyed the salad and mayo.

Alongside I went with one of their scotch eggs. It looked great, had a runny yolk, but I wasn’t totally enamoured with the surrounding pork sausagemeat. I did have quite high expectations about the scotch egg, so it was probably very nice, I was just expecting something outstanding.

Overall it was an interesting sandwich experience. I can understand the popularity of the place, and I might go again, but only if there was a short queue.

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Delicious Gastro Pub Food at the Canbury Arms

It was August and we were staying with family in Kingston. The night before we had had some great sushi at Obon and on this evening we were visiting the Canbury Arms.

This is a pub, probably what most people would call a gastro pub, there was a section of the pub for people who wanted to drink, but there was a larger section with tables for people who wanted a meal. There is a difference in decor between the two sections, the restaurant area looks a lot more like you would imagine a restaurant should look like, whilst the bar area has lots of wood.

We were shown to our table and I looked over the menu, I have to say I had cheated and looked at the menu online before, but even so looking at the menu in the flesh, I wasn’t sure what I would have.

For my starter I decided to have the calamari and share it with my son. I kind of default to calamari as a starter, something that I do enjoy, and I have had great calamari in a variety of places, but sometimes I think I should have something else as a change.

It was nice, but nothing special, I think if I went again I would choose something different from the menu.

My sister in law went with the farmhouse pork, black pudding & sage scotch egg, brown sauce.

Now it was only later when I had posted the picture to Instagram (as one does) that someone commented on the saucy nature of the presentation of the food. Having said that I was offered half of the scotch egg, to which I said, yes please. This was actually rather excellent, and I really enjoyed the intensity of flavour in the pork around the egg. I could have eaten all of that dish.

For my main, there were some lovely choices, but I decided that I would go against my usual choices and have the chicken. Usually I would avoid the chicken, as I have it quite a lot at home, but this time I decided I would go down a different route and I would choose the chicken. This was a chicken supreme, asparagus, butternut squash puree, sautéed wild mushrooms & tarragon butter. I think what sold it to me was the wild mushroom element of the dish.

The chicken was cooked to perfection, tender and moist and full of flavour. The butternut squash puree was to die for, it was so smooth, buttery and full of flavour. The mushrooms weren’t as good as I was hoping, but I did enjoy them. The tarragon butter was an addition that in my mind brought the dish together. This was a delicious plate of food and I really enjoyed eating every mouthful.

We had some great food across the table, some great looking steaks. I did quite like the look of the sea bass fillet, on crushed jersey royals, peas, spring greens, with caper butter.

The salad from the specials menu was also outstanding. Black Quinoa Salad with roasted cauliflower, feta, pomegranate and harissa dressing.

Overall we had a wonderful meal, delicious food and we left feeling very happy and satisfied.

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Weston Food Festival

Went shopping at the weekend in Weston-super-Mare, which to be honest, is now quite a depressing experience with all the shops that have closed down, and many of these closed down even before the covid-19 lockdown.

We went into the Sovereign Centre to go to Waterstones, this is a shopping centre that has a food hall with no food places from which you can buy food! They converted the Druckers Café into this food hall, no one took up the other kiosks or stands, Druckers closed and so we were left with a food hall where you can’t buy food! Well not entirely accurate, there is a Parsons’ pasty shop in the centre, but you’re not allowed to eat in the food hall as it has been roped off!

So as we walked outside the Sovereign Centre it was a nice surprise to bump into the Weston-super-Mare food fair.

We looked around the stalls, in the end we bought some gluten free scotch eggs, which were very nice. As with the recent Portishead food fair I was slightly disappointed with the stalls, but even so it was nice to see such a busy market in Weston.

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Time for Gluten Free Scotch Eggs

Gluten Free Scotch Eggs

Myself and others in the family quite enjoy scotch eggs, however now with a couple of people in the family on gluten free diets I was set the challenge of making some gluten free scotch eggs. The main issue with shop bought scotch eggs is the wheat in the breadcrumbs on the outside and potentially wheat in the sausage meat.

So remembering a cookery programme where they had cooked scotch eggs (I think it was Professional Masterchef) I went out and bought some ingredients.

As well as the medium sized free range eggs, I got some gluten free chipolata sausages. I did think if I should make my own gluten free breadcrumbs, but in the end I did find a packet of gluten free breadcrumbs from Morrisons.

I decided to use these as they would ensure the scotch eggs looked like the ones you could buy in the shops.

I hard boiled the eggs for ten minutes and then left them to cool. I did think about doing soft boiled eggs with a runny yolk, as they did on the telly, but in the end I wasn’t sure of the timings.

Having peeled the eggs I took the sausage meat from a single chipolata. I did this by gently slicing the skin of the sausage and removing it. I patted the sausage meat into a thin circle before wrapping it around the egg. One tip I had picked up from the cooking programme was to ensure that the sausagement was an even layer around the egg, which I think I managed to do.

The scotch egg was then rolled and covered in gluten free plain flour, then covered in beaten egg, before being covered in the gluten free breadcrumbs.

The resulting scotch egg was then deep fried in hot oil. It’s at times like this I wish I had a proper deep fat fryer, but in the end I cooked them in a smallish pan one at a time.

Once I thought the sausagemeat was cooked, the scotch egg was removed from the oil and drained on kitchen paper.

Well the end result was an authentic looking, tasting scotch egg with the texture one would expect. I was well pleased and they were very tasty.