S0130435

Like most British people of a certain age I have two memories of pickled eggs. The first is the giant jar on the counter in the chippy, ghostly blobs suspended in liquid turned murky from too many spoons dipped inside. I used to be terrified of that jar, until I actually tried one. Then, I was hooked. Fish and chips was no longer acceptable unless I got a face full of egg and vinegar guff when I unwrapped the paper. Not tempting you? Weird.

The other memory of course is of a similar jar behind the counter at a certain type of boozer. A pickled egg, dropped into a pack of crisps, then shaken about, was one of the best beer snacks of all time. People are pussies nowadays with their quail scotch eggs and house made ketchup. Same goes for your delicately puffed pig skin served with apple sauce in ramekins. Give me a proper pork scratching with a layer of soft fat underneath and a tooth-breaking top, possibly sporting a couple of proud bristles.

So this is my recipe for pickled eggs. In the spirit of those memories I’ve kept it fairly traditional but for the addition of a beetroot because it turns the eggs pink inside and who doesn’t want a trippy egg? There’s chilli too, because I just went to Mexico. Okay so it’s quite a modern pickled egg, but I can’t stink of chip fat and stale pints forever.

Pickled Eggs

I wrote this recipe for the Better with BRITA campaign.

Pink Pickled Eggs Recipe

12 excellent eggs (e.g. Clarence Court)
1 litre white or cider vinegar
500ml BRITA filtered water
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp coriander seed
1 tbsp cumin seeds
4 dried puya entero chillies (or other dried chillies of your choice)
1 large beetroot, cooked and quartered
1 red onion, thickly sliced
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp demerara sugar

Cook the eggs until hard boiled (place them in cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 7 minutes).

Mix the liquids, sugar, salt and spices together and simmer for 10 minutes.

Stack the peeled eggs, beetroot quarters and onion slices in sterilised jars then cover with the pickling liquor. They will be ready to eat after two weeks. Store in the fridge.

Green Goddess

Think of all the excellent American salads. There’s the cheesy, garlic laced Caesar, the creamy kicker that is the blue cheese wedge, the Waldorf…actually the Waldorf can be a bit like eating gravel mixed with mayonnaise, and let’s not even start looking into the ‘jello salads’…but my point is that there are some beauts out there. Which makes me wonder why we haven’t really fallen for the green goddess.

It’s a dressing, rather than a ‘whole salad’, and I can’t get enough of it. Basically, it consists of a truckload of herbs, avocado, spring onions (green things, see?), garlic, and then anchovies – those magical, concentrated-tasty transformers. Lots of recipes add mayonnaise to bind but to me, a mayo bound salad is a recipe for feeling sick afterwards, so I use yoghurt. It’s creamy, fresh, punchy as hell, and healthy. So yeah its basically witchcraft. Oh and you can use it in loads of ways. There’s the obvious, dressing a salad way, then there’s the dip way (see pic) or there’s the sauce way, by which I mean that it’s awesome with roast chicken, and also fish. Oh and then it’s brilliant in sandwiches, too. I think I’ve covered all the ways now.

Green Goddess Dressing Recipe

4 anchovy fillets or 1 tablespoon fish sauce
A large bunch of basil
Standard bunch of chives
2 spring onions
1 avocado, peeled
2 cloves garlic, peeled
3 tablespoons of natural (full fat) yoghurt
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar (or cider vinegar, or lemon juice)
3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Put everything in a blender. Blend.

Taste it – dressings are about balance and that depends on the creaminess of your avocado, the acidity of your vinegar and so on. If it tastes a bit ‘flat’, add some more vinegar and/or salt and see how that makes a difference.