A Southern Scotch Egg

In 1954 West Germany defeated the Swiss in the football World Cup; in Morocco a swarm of locusts destroyed £10 million worth of citrus fruits in just six weeks, and on home turf in Blighty Roger Bannister ran the first ever mile in under four minutes. But even closer to home (for me anyway), in a small village just off the Great Cambridge road, a stone’s throw from the house where I grew up, a butcher named Douglas White and his wife Anna created a humble masterpiece – The Braughing Sausage.

For over five decades the people of East Hertfordshire have paid allegiance to ‘D.White Butchers’, and while many things have changed in the local area; the development of Stansted Airport, yours truly moving into town in October 1994, and more recently the welcome invasion of ‘Standon Calling’ festival less than one mile from the shop. The recipe for the sausages has remained the same. Unlike it’s bullying cousin the Lincolnshire Sausage, steeped in it’s history and aggressive in taste, the Braughing banger has a much smoother and more rounded flavour; versatile without being apathetic, chivalrous but not arrogant, strong and silent. By which I mean that it holds it’s own as a stand alone, but at the same time gets on with everything.

A while ago I read an article in one of the fall-out-sections of the Sunday paper about a man in the North West whose love of the equally humble Scotch egg had led him to repeatedly experiment in the kitchen to create the ultimate hybrid of the classic snack. ‘The Manchester Egg’ was born and has gone from strength to strength, and ever since I read the article I’ve been desperate to try one. It consists of a pickled egg, wrapped in spiced black pudding and coated with Japanese panko breadcrumbs, and is accompanied by the tagline – “A hearty commodity worthy of a gentlemen”. The words sold it to me and the pictures sealed the deal, yet although the Manchester Egg is on the up, it really needs to be eaten fresh, and East Herts is quite a way from Old Trafford. So it was up to me then, to make my own version of the savoury snack, with a little sweet chucked in for good measure.

So without further ado, I present ‘The Southern Scotch Egg’.

Ingredients: (Makes 9)

700g Braughing Sausages, skins removed

1 tspn thyme leaves, finely chopped

2 tspns fresh sage leaves, finely chopped

2 tablespoons chives, finely chopped

1 tablespoon runny honey

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

100ml water

Salt and Pepper

11 large free range eggs

150g plain flour

2 tablespoons hot chilli powder

200g fine white breadcrumbs

Vegetable oil for deep frying (1.5 litres)

Method:

1. Put 9 of the 11 eggs into a large saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. When the water starts to bubble time for exactly 2 minutes, take the eggs off, pour out the boiling water and run the eggs under a cold tap in the colander for a few minutes. Leave them to cool down for a bit.

2. In a blender add the sausage meat and water and pulse until the meat is fairly smooth, remove and chuck it into a bowl. Add the chopped herbs, honey, the mustard and a pinch or two of salt and pepper. Mix it well until it’s evenly combined. Get a long piece of Clingfilm out onto the work surface and make 3 balls of the meat mixture about the same size as a snooker ball and put them onto the Clingfilm set apart about 8 inches, put another sheet of Clingfilm on top and push the meat out into disks about 5-6 inches across.

3. Take care to peel the eggs very carefully as they are only soft boiled and very delicate; when you got all 9 shells off pull up the top layer of Clingfilm and pick up the meat disks, one at a time, and wrap them around the eggs evenly so they make perfect spheres and none of the egg underneath is showing. Repeat this 9 times until you have nine meatballs with eggs hiding inside.

4. Get 3 bowls, in the first put the flour and chilli powder in and mix them together with a little salt and pepper. In the second crack and beat the remaining 2 eggs. In the third put the breadcrumbs.

5. Heat the oil in a deep pan till it pushes the 200°C mark, seriously hot basically. Roll the balls through the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs. Deep fry them in batches of three until they’re golden brown, get them out with a slotted spoon and leave them to drain on kitchen towel. Serve with salad and Mary Berry’s ‘Special Mustard Dressing’ from Waitrose, the best dressing in town.