Happy Easter everyone! I hope the bunny brought you all the chocolate eggs you wanted. I am also bringing the Easter classics of buns and eggs but in savoury form with some choux buns with truffled mushrooms and quail eggs. I wanted to use up the leftover quail eggs from the Nevilled Eggs. A quick search of my recipe spreadsheet led me to a beautiful book called Food Fashion Friends Fleur Wood. She is a designer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Coming from a former fashion designer the book is very glamorous so I had high hopes for this recipe!
(And yes, I have a recipe spreadsheet. And yes, I know that makes me the very opposite of the glamorous chic in the book!)
It turned out that I had a few more quail eggs than required for the choux buns so I also made one of Jamie Oliver’s dipping salts for quail eggs. He has three recipes, all of which sound delicious but I chose one with smoked paprika and cayenne.
Fleur Wood’s recipe has black caviar as an additional garnish for her eggs. I did not have any of this so I omitted it but I’m sure the buns would have been delicious with it. A little sprinkle of some parsley or chives might have been nice too.
The one thing that for me, did not work in this recipe were the quail’s eggs. They didn’t bring anything to the dish which was a bit disappointing as I was looking for something in which they would shine. The mushroom filling was so delicious that I would have been happy with just them or maybe a bit of goat’s or cream cheese added. Even in the photo from the book, the eggs look a little…out of place. Maybe Fleur was also trying to use up some quail eggs?
Picture via Food Fashion Friends
The choux buns worked like a dream which I was pleased about! So, whilst I was a bit disappointed that the eggs didn’t shine, the mushroom filling and the buns definitely put this in the “make again” territory. The Jamie Oliver dipping eggs were also a nice little bonus!
The Recipe – Mushrooms & Quail Egg Choux Buns
Incidentally, I had never cooked quail’s eggs before the Nevilled eggs. So, I had never realised quite how beautiful I would find their speckly outsides:
Or that they would have a gorgeous blue inside!
I am off to eat more eggs, of the chocolate variety! Have a great week!
Hello friends and welcome to a pre-Easter edition of “What Posh People Ate in the 80’s”. This time they are not even pretending to be slumming it as even the name of this dish “Eggsclusive” speaks to its ritziness! The recipe for this eggcelllent (hey, if they can make egg puns, so can i! 😜) comes from the Vogue Entertaining Guide from Autumn 1986.
The Eggsclusive recipe comes from an article about the Lamrock Cafe in Bondi Beach in Sydney. A quick Google search showed that The Lamrock is still going strong. And OMG…look at that view. I know EXACTLY where I am heading for brunch next time I go to Sydney! (The Eggsclusive is sadly no longer on the menu though).
The Eggsclusive Recipe and Variations
You will notice that I have altered the recipe a little bit. I did not cook the smoked salmon or the caviare in the eggs, just served them on top. I also only used one type of caviar and I sprinkled some parsley and chives over the top.
This was really easy to make and has a lovely luxe appeal to it It would make the perfect breakfast in bed for someone you love (or yourself) over the Easter break. Why not complete the feel with a glass of champagne? And maybe some of these vintage Easter Pinups could influence your choice of attire!
How cute is this?
Or if little cottontails aren’t your bag, you could try a tutu like Debbie Reynolds.
Maybe an Easter bonnet might be more your style?
I would, however, suggest you avoid bursting out of an egg. This looks uncomfortable!
Have a safe and happy Easter, however you decide to spend it!
Other Recipes from the Vogue Entertaining Guide Autumn 1986:
Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! At Maison de la retro foods, we are supplementing our chocolate eggs with some North African Hamine Eggs. These came to us via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. The book offers two versions of this recipe. There is the traditional way:
In Egypt there are special shops selling them; there, after the eggs have been cooked for 3 or 4 hours, they are put under the ashes of a fire and left for as long as 8 hours – this makes them as creamy as butter”
– Good Housekeeping World Cookery
Never mind the pyramids and the Sphinx. Get me over to Egypt pronto for some of those buttery eggs!!!
Eggs Hamine – The Recipe
The non-traditional version of these eggs is so easy!
Put the brown outside skins of some onions into a saucepan of ocld water with the eggs and boil for 2 hours or as long as possible. The onion skins turn the shells of the eggs and the whites brown. Shell and halve the eggs and serve hot or cold with lemon wedges, salt, pepper and mixed spices”
I cooked my eggs in the slow cooker for a full 8 hours.
Pre – Water
4 hours – One of the eggs cracked during the cooking but did not ooze out like they do when they crack during normal boiling.
Eight hours!
Note, if you decide to make these in your slow cooker, the onion skins will stain your slow cooker brown along with the eggs. Get ready to soak and scrub to remove it!
Eight hours and fifteen minutes!
I sprinkled my egg with some salt and some dukkah and dug in! It was delicious. There was a faint taste of something – not exactly onion but slightly savoury to the egg which was different to a normal boiled egg. I would not say that it was buttery but the white seemed more delicate than a normal boiled egg.
I was also very surprised to see that the onion skin dye had penetrated not only into the white which became a gorgeous soft caramel colour but also the yolk! This was startling because it is so strange to have a monochrome egg!
These were nice and an interesting experiment but for me, it was a long time to wait for a fancy boiled egg so I will probably not make them again. If I ever do get to Egypt though, I will be making a breakfast beeline for the Hamine Eggs shops!
Making these eggs might be a fun thing to do with kids for Easter or for a science project on osmosis.
I solemnly promise that will be my only egg pun for this whole post.
But really, what is Easter about if it’s not about eggs?
What?
Well, yeah, ok sure it’s about Jesus….but eggs are important too.
This year I made my own chocolate eggs.
Home Made Easter Eggs
And ok, so Adriano Zumbo is not shaking in his shoes just yet but I get some points for trying right? Can’t this be like Little League and I get a medal just for turning up?
For those of you who don’t know Adriano Zumbo, he is a mad-scientist genius baker (kind of like an Australian Heston Blumenthal but with more macaroons and fewer snails). He makes things like this gorgeous V8 cake.
Think it looks simple?
Think again.
Because when you cut this baby open you get this:
Yeah…uh huh and OMG wow!!!
Maybe I’ll try to make that next Easter never.
For anyone brave enough to try, you can get the recipe by clicking the link below:
However, ’nuff about Zumbo, back to my eggs. They weren’t just any plain old chocolate eggs. Uh uh. No way.
They also had a peanut butter fudge filling:
And in true retro style the peanut butter fudge mix has a secret ingredient.
Mashed potato.
Yes, I did just say mashed potato.
And it works surprisingly well. You can’t taste it but it gives the peanut butter a firmer texture. Actually the texture is very similar to that of my one of my all time favourite decadent little treats – a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. And when I say “a” Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, I of course mean a four twin pack.
I even had to check that there wasn’t mashed potato in a Reese’s PBC. There isn’t but there are two things that don’t actually have names, just initials. And you have to love a list that contains non-fat milk and milk fat right next to each other. So, that would be milk right?
You can check the full list out here.
I’m not going to come over all Michael Pollan about this (guess who finally finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma?) but you know what? I’m really not sure about eating the stuff that is just initials. However, whilst we’re on the subject of Mr Pollan, here is what he has to say about TBHQ, one of the ingredients in my possibly formerly beloved peanut butter cups:
But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to “help preserve freshness.” According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause “nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.” Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.
Hmm…compared to lighter fluid, the mashed potato suddenly seems a bit more attractive does it not? And yes ok, you would probably have to eat your own weight in them to get that gram of TBHQ but it was enough to make me walk away from the rack of peanut butter cups today. Damn you Pollan.
Melt 2/3 of the chocolate in a bowl over hot water and coat the moulds with the melted chocolate. You may need to do this more than once to get the desired thickness of chocolate shell.
Place the chopped potato into a saucepan and cover with water. Boil until tender.
Drain and mash.
Add your condensed milk, just as you would add regular milk to normal mashed potatoes.
Allow this mixture to cool.
Mix in your peanut butter and confectioner’s sugar. It should form a fairly thick paste.
Add more condensed milk or confectioner’s sugar if required.
Spoon this mixture into the chocolate lined moulds.
Melt the remaining 1/3 of the chocolate. Use this to seal the mixture into the moulds.
Chill until the chocolate hardens then press your eggs out of the moulds.
Notes
You will also need Easter Egg Moulds. I bought mine from a craft shop for around $4.
Ox Eye Eggs
In my last post I assumed that everyone would know what Egg in a Hole was. I then further confused the issue by using the name we call these things in my family which is an Ox-Eye egg.
I actually managed to trace back the source of why we call it that. It comes from this book which I inherited from my…hmmm…I’m not sure of our exact relationship…maybe my second cousin? A great cousin? My nana’s sister’s daughter.
My Learn To Cook Book
This was possibly my first cook book and the ox-eye eggs have become a family favourite. I will return to this book in due course because the illustrations are awesome but here is the recipe for the original ox-eye eggs:
I prefer to do mine in a frying pan than in the oven as I think it gives you a little more control over your preferred degree of yolk runniness but the choice is yours!
And look at this for an amazing breakfast – seriously, if I’d thrown some cheese on this plate all my five favourite food groups would have been covered – eggs, bacon, avocado, and bread!
Ox Eye Eggs, Bacon and Loaded Guacamole
Loading up that toasted circle with a piece of bacon, some guac and some semi-runny yolk? Probably about as close to heaven as I’m going to get!!!
The Perfect Bite!
And that’s Easter 2014 done!
Next time, a double whammy, a retro treat from Salads from All Seasons and a Daring Kitchen Challenge. I’m 3 months behind on my Daring Kitchen stuff and I’m really nervous about all of them – for very different reasons – again which we will get to in due course.
February’s challenge was Salad Dressing – and if you’re thinking that should be fairly impossible to fuck up, well, you haven’t seen the recipe I’m planning on using.
Hint – it too has a secret ingredient, which incidentally has been mentioned in this post. And it’s not mashed potato. If only.
I’m loving my extended Easter break. Hope your week is fabulous whatever you are doing!
I am perfectly aware that these sandwiches do not resemble Easter Lilies and would, based on their look, be far more appropriately called Calla Lily Sandwiches. But it’s Easter ok?
And take a look at them. How pretty are they? Perfect for an afternoon tea with the girls….
Easter Lily sandwiches
And they taste pretty damn good too!!!
There are a few recipes for these lily sandwiches floating about the interwebs. However, most of them use green onions for the stem. I actually made it that way the first time but was disappointed in the taste.
Chomping on that big stalk made the sandwich way too oniony – I’m pretty sure no one else wants to bite into a huge chunk of onion like that either. Or suffer the onion breath afterwards. But to use them as decoration only and take them out when it came to eating the sandwich seemed like a waste. My first thought was to replace the onions with beans but when I went to buy the beans, I was waylaid by some gorgeous baby asparagus spears.
Easter Lily Sandwiches Ingredients
And my version of the Lily Sandwich was born.
If you can only get thicker asparagus you could cut the spears in half down their length. If asparagus is not available, use beans or celery matchsticks – all of which I think would be preferable to the onion!
Oh and a tip for the frugal. When you cut the circles out of the bread, don’t throw the rest of the bread out. Save them to use for what my family call Ox-Eye eggs but is, I believe more commonly called, Egg in A Hole the next morning! Any asparagus left over can also be dipped into a runny yolk for a breakfast made in heaven!!!
Oh and if you don’t happen to have a rolling-pin handy, a bottle of your favourite sauv blanc works equally as well.
And would also be the perfect accompaniment to these sandwiches at your Easter afternoon tea!
