Hello friends and retro food lovers! Remember back in your school days when you got marks/grades for effort? Alternatively, does the phrase “the soul was willing, but the heart was weak” resonate with you? Well, they will indicate how I feel about the recipe for Pebbles on The Beach, which I’ve renamed Pebbles on a Peruvian Beach.

I understand what they were trying to do here…it just didn’t work! This recipe was also an anomaly because, so far, everything else I’ve made from Marguerite Patten’s 500 Recipes for Quick Meals has been great!  Remember the Sardine Toadstools?  (It’s still my favourite thing from last year)!

Pebbles on The Beach – The Intent (I think)

So, I assume that in this recipe the tops of the eggs and the potatoes would poke out of the cheese sauce like pebbles on a beach! If pebbles were white and pink and the sea was a cheese sauce.  So, even then, the analogy has problems.  Pebbles on the moon?  Pebbles in the desert?  These may have been more accurate visual descriptions of this dish. 

Pebbles on The Beach – The Actuality

Without it’s Peruvian flavour bomb, this dish was as bland as could be.  Potatoes don’t have much flavour nor do eggs.  Don’t get me wrong, I love both of these ingredients but even combined with a cheese sauce this was dull.  My best description would be nursery or invalid food.  It even looks dull without its garnish!

The second is that the recipe requires you to take eggs that are already hard-boiled and then cook them for another 20 minutes.  Those eggs were rock-hard! 

Oh! 

Surely that was not why they called this dish pebbles?

The cure for the blandness was to serve the Pebbles on the beach with some Peruvian Salsa.  We last saw this salsa paired with some Croquetas de Carne almost exactly two years ago, in January 2023. 

The cure for the eggs?  Maybe keep them raw and cook them in the cheese sauce?  I don’t quite know how to fix that one.  And, to be honest, it wasn’t tempting enough, even with the Peruvian Salsa to give it another go!  Honestly, if you want a really good tasty combination of potatoes and eggs, then I would recommend Roseanne Cash’s Potato Salad over this any day of the week!  

Oh well, you can’t win ’em all….here’s the recipe in case you have any bright ideas or want to feed a three-year-old or an invalid.  

Have a great week!