the times | Thursday December 3 2020 1GT 5
the table
Don’t squeeze — juggle. Cupping it,
moulding the meat around and
twisting it.”
Then come the breadcrumbs. He
says they should be fresh, rather than
the super-crunchy Japanese panko
ones. “Fresh breadcrumbs absorb the
flavour of the sausage meat.”
The key to getting a good crunch,
however, is in the frying. Ideally, you
need a deep-fat fryer. If you don’t
have one of those, you need a large
saucepan filled a third of the way up
(to avoid calling out the fire brigade)
and a thermometer to ensure your oil
is at 165C to 170C. Don’t overcrowd
the pan and they should be done
in six to seven minutes.
The true joy of a Scotch egg is
its versatility. Anything that goes
with eggs — and that’s a field as
wide as an Oklahoma prairie —
can be wrapped around it and
deep-fried. Ravinder Bhogal, chefat the London restaurant Jikoni,
cooks a prawn toast Scotch egg,
which she describes as “the bonny
love child” of two much-loved
snacks that are “outrageously good
when they come together”. Instead
of sausage meat, a paste made of
prawns, soy sauce, spring onions,
ginger and chilli is wrapped around
a quail egg. Use blitzed prawn
crackers and sesame seeds instead
of bread crumbs.
Tom Parker Bowles, who
wrote Fortnum’s The Cook Book,
recommends adding black pudding
to the sausage meat. Nicholson
sometimes uses nduja to spice up
the sausage meat and has tried a
vegetarian pea and broad bean
coating with sesame seed crumb.
“You can literally make any combo
and they are all delicious,” she says.
Your only decision then is whether
to have one or go the full Michael
Gove and have two.I’m sorry, but
a Scotch egg
has to be fully
hard-boiled
How substantial is your
Scotch egg? Harry Wallop
T
hanks to the rules
governing pubs
in Tier 2 areas
— and the
flip-flopping of
cabinet ministers as to
whether it constitutes a
“substantial meal” — the
poor old Scotch egg has
become a political football.
Which is unfortunate, not
just because of its ovoid
shape. It deserves better
than being the next Jaffa
Cake or Greggs pasty —
a snack to be dissected by
sophists and charlatans,
rather than celebrated.
Because a good Scotch
egg is a thing of wonder.
Especially a homemade
one. “Yes, they are a little
bit of work to make at
home, but nothing beats a freshly
made one, cooked then and there,”
says Chantelle Nicholson, the chef
and owner of the London restaurants
Tredwell’s and All’s Well. “Store-
bought ones are never cooked
correctly. You miss out on all the
deliciousness of the perfect Scotch
egg: runny yolk, unctuous
surrounding and crispy coating.”
For that you need to get your hands
dirty. “It’s like baking bread, you
need to get stuck in,” says Neil
Chambers, who runs the Handmade
Scotch Egg Company, which by his
estimate has supplied a million
scotch eggs to delis, farm shops and
festivals since he set up the company
in 2002 with his wife, Penny.
The first trick is to boil your egg to
whatever consistency you want it.
Penny says, “I’m sorry, but a Scotch
egg has to be fully hard-boiled,”
although she admits that she is
swimming against the tide, given that
every Scotch egg on Instagram has to
ooze its yolk pornographically.
She recommends ten minutes in
boiling water. Fortnum & Mason,
which claims to have invented the
Scotch egg — although food
historians point out that nargisi kofta
were made in India much earlier —
recommends six minutes. To give
credit to Fortnum’s, its Scotch eggs
are beautiful. And at £22.95 for six,
so they should be.
All chefs agree that the moment
the egg is cooked, it must be plunged
into cold water to stop it going grey
and lifeless, but how to cover the egg
in sausage meat without making a
hash of it? The key is not to use too
much meat. Fortnum’s suggests 80g
or so for a medium egg; Chambers
estimates 120g at most for a large
free-range one. You want to just
cover the egg, not smother it in a
meat duvet. It should be standard
sausage meat from your butchers,
nothing too lean, “otherwise you end
up with what I call dinosaur eggs,
where the meat cracks”, he says. A
bit of fat and breadcrumbs in the
meat will help to bind it all together.
Gary Rhodes recommended rolling
the meat out between two sheets of
clingfilm, but Chambers says there’s
no need. “Flatten out into a burger
patty, place the egg on the patty and
then juggle it from hand to hand.and a squirt of lime. Add a splash of
Campari in there too.AROMATIC BITTERS
So much power in such a small
bottle. This is the single most useful
ingredient you can own. A true
“cocktail” is spirit, sugar, water
and bitters. And it’s only going to
set you back a tenner.
Best Angostura Bitters
(200ml, 44.7 per cent ABV,
£10, Tesco). Simply essential.
Boutique Bitter Truth
Travellers Set (5 x 20ml,
£17.99, The Drink
Supermarket). A gift
set of five different
styles of bitters.
What to make with it
An old-fashioned is so
called because it’s one
of the oldest cocktails
known to man. Classically,
it’s made with rye whiskey
or bourbon, but it’s worth a
whirl with dark rum too. Add about
60ml of dark spirit, 10ml of sugar
syrup and a good dash of bourbon
to a large tumbler. Fill it with ice, stir,
and garnish with an orange or lemon
twist and/or a cocktail cherry.BRANDY
It’s good to have a touch of class for
after-dinner sipping. Cognac is the
distinguished French stuff — and as
with champagne, there are bargains
if you look beyond household names.
For a classy switcheroo, try English
apple cider brandy.
Basic 5-Year-Old XO Brandy (£13.49,
700ml, 40 per cent ABV, Aldi). A steal.
Decant into a fancy bottle and see if
anyone can tell the difference.
Better Somerset Cider Brandy
5-Year-Old (£24, 500ml, 42 per cent
ABV, somersetciderbrandy.com).
A world-class spirit.
Boutique Rémy Martin 1738 Accord
Royal (£40, 700ml, 40 per cent ABV,
Waitrose Cellar). Smooth and
obliging, this seems to slip down
of its own volition.
What to make with it
Brandy usually pairs well with liqueurs
in a rough 3:1 ratio. The B&B (brandy
and bénédictine) and sidecar (brandy
and crème de menthe) are historical
digestifs. However, brandy is shaken
up too: try 50ml of brandy, 10ml of
orange liqueur, 10ml of golden sugar
syrup, 10ml of pineapple juice and a
dash of Angostura, shaken, strained
and served up for an East India No 2.WILDCARD
Save the last space in your drinks
cabinet for an interesting aperitif
or a liqueur that you just can’t get
enough of. My personal choices?
Basic Cynar (700ml, £16.5 per cent
ABV, £13, The Drop Store). A
wonderful, brooding Italian amaro.
Better Giffard Abricot de Roussillon
(700ml, 25 per cent ABV, £18.83,
Master of Malt). Sumptuous, summery
apricot liqueur.
Boutique Green Chartreuse (700ml,
55 per cent ABV, £35.99, Master of
Malt). The absolute end-game boss
of liqueurs.
What to make with it For a liqueur
of any sort, I’d recommend the
general-purpose aromatic formula
50ml of spirit, 25ml of dry or sweet
vermouth, 10ml of liqueur and a dash
of bitters, stirred up, Manhattan-style.
Richard Godwin writes a weekly
cocktails newsletter called
The Spirits
thespirits.substack.comfor bourbon in old-fashioneds
or Manhattans; create a tropical
symphony with extra liqueurs, syrups
and fruits as you like; or master a
traditional rum punch (soooo much
better than mulled wine).
Basic Mount Gay 1703 Eclipse (700ml,
40 per cent ABV, £15.50 Ocado).
Outstanding-value mixing rum.
Better Appleton’s 8-Year-Old Reserve
Rum (700ml, 43 per cent ABV, £24,
Sainsburys). Great all-rounder from a
reliably excellent Jamaican distillery.
Boutique Foursquare Diadem
12-Year-Old (£84.95 for
700ml, 60 per cent ABV,
Whisky Exchange). Like
drinking a sunbeam.
What to make with it
The jungle bird — it
would have been the
cocktail of 2020 if
anywhere had been
open. Shake, with crushed
ice, 45ml of dark rum,
15ml of Campari, 15ml of
lime juice, 15ml of sugar syrup
and 60ml of pineapple juice. Pour
unstrained into a large tumbler and
go all out with the garnish: cherries,
limes, pineapple fronds, gardenia
blossoms, umbrellas...ORANGE LIQUEUR
A sweet, warm, bright orange liqueur
that will do the heavy lifting in
margaritas, sidecars and mai tais.
Basic Curacao Triple Sec Liqueur
(350ml, 25 per cent ABV, £8,
Sainsbury’s). Perfectly acceptable.
Better Cointreau (500ml, 40 per cent
ABV, £15, Asda). Pricier but peerless.
Strong too. You only need a dash at
a time, so it lasts a while.
What to make with it The white
lady is a 1930s London classic that
has fallen on hard times. Revive it.
Introduce: 50ml of gin, 25ml of lemon
juice, 15ml of orange liqueur, 5-10ml
of sugar syrup (to taste) and 15ml of
egg white. Shake once without ice to
froth up the egg white, then again with
ice to get it Arctic cold. Fine-strain
into as elegant a glass as you can lay
your hands on.TEQUILA
If it says 100 per cent agave
on the label, you won’t go
far wrong. Personally,
I prefer the reposado
style, which is “rested”
in barrels to give it a
pale-straw colour and
a hint of age. Or switch
for mezcal if you want
hipster points.
Basic Olmeca Altos
Plata (700ml, 38 per cent
ABV, £19 with Clubcard,
Tesco). A decent 100 per cent
agave silver tequila.
Better Ocho 8 Reposado
(£23.95, 500ml, 40 per
cent ABV, The Whisky
Exchange). Cheaper
than a flight to Mexico.
Boutique Del
Maguey Vida Mezcal
(£44.95, The Whisky
Exchange). Smoky,
earthy, unlike
anything else.
What to make with it
A Tommy’s margarita offers
the purest tequila hit: 50ml
tequila, 15ml lime juice, 10ml
agave syrup. However, a paloma —
a grapefruit margarita made long —
is more where it’s at. The simplest way
to make it is: tequila, grapefruit soda
(eg San Pellegrino Pompelmo or Ting)Daiquiri
Paloma