Cakes & Bakes: Cloud eggs

In last week’s soft sourdough sandwich loaf recipe, you were introduced to one of Justin’s favourite brunch dishes – a bacon sandwich. This week, it’s mine – a veggie full English breakfast.

I like it with veggie black pudding, hash browns, mushrooms, baked beans, fried bread… and cloud eggs.

It’s lovely on a lazy Sunday. If you don’t want to go to the effort of a full English, or your just not that hungry, cloud eggs are lovely atop a slice of toast with no more than a sprinkling of salt and a grind of black pepper. A very simple recipe for our Cakes & Bakes series… but well worth sharing, all the same!

Cloud eggs

2018-06-27 06:59:22

Prep Time

10 min

Cook Time

5 min

Total Time

15 min

Prep Time

10 min

Cook Time

5 min

Total Time

15 min

Ingredients

Eggs (one per person)
pinch of salt

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Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 175ºC/350ºF/Gas mark 4. Grease a small skillet or frying pan (make sure it doesn't have a wooden or plastic handle as it will be going into the oven)
Separate the white from the yolk. Set the yolk aside and put the egg white and salt into a clean, high-sided mixing bowl (make sure the bowl is grease free as it will affect the volume), whisk the egg whites to the stiff peak stage
Use a spatula to carefully tip the egg white into the skillet - you don't want to lose the volume. Make a small hollow in the middle of the whites before putting the pan into the oven
Bake for 3-5 minutes, remove from the oven and carefully tip the yolk into the pre-made hollow
Put the pan back into the oven and bake for a further couple of minutes - the lenght of time depends on how runny you like your yolk
Remove from the oven and plate it up

H is for Home Harbinger https://hisforhomeblog.com/

Soy sauce eggs or shoyu tamago

I’ve been looking after our neighbours’ chickens again – I refer to them ‘the ladies’. Each morning, they rush to greet me at the door of the coop, clucking and cooing with anticipation of breakfast. The 9 of them then follow me around, getting under my feet, as I replenish their drinking water and collect the eggs.

Between them, they lay 6 or 7 eggs per day – I think there’s one or two that aren’t pulling their weight! After a few days, the pile of eggs really mounts up. Each time I look after them, I attempt new recipes to avoid a glut.

Soy sauce eggs or shoyu tamago are traditionally eaten with ramen (Japanese noodle soup), which I love.

Yesterday, I had a couple quartered atop a salad with a little drizzle of soya vinaigrette. Today for lunch, I had them with a bowl spicy noodles.

What would you make with a surplus of eggs?

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Soy sauce eggs or shoyu tamago

Rating: 51

Prep Time: 6 hours

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 6 hours, 10 minutes

Number of servings: 6

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Ingredients

6 eggs
1L/ 34fl oz water
3tbsp soy sauce
2tbsp rice wine vinegar
1tsp Chinese five spice
1tsp Szechuan peppercorns
½tsp ground cinnamon
½tsp ground ginger
2 whole cloves
2 star anise 'stars'
1 green cardamom pod
1tbs palm sugar (you can use brown sugar)

Method

Boil the eggs the way you like them - I like them fairly hard-boiled which takes about 6-7 minutes. Cool by plunging into cold water, then remove the shells. Put them into a large, sterilised Kilner jar, cover and set aside
In a large saucepan, add all the other ingredients and bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar
Remove from the heat and carefully pour over the boiled, peeled eggs
Allow to cool slightly before snapping the lid shut
Cool to room temperature before transferring to the fridge. Allow to marinate for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight

Notes

If you don't have all the different spices, just use the ones you do - the soy sauce and Chinese five spice are the most important. You can reuse the liquor, bringing it up to the boil prior to each use. The flavour develops and gets better over time!

What to do with an egg glut

Last week, we looked after our neighbours’ chickens while they went on holiday. We’ve done it before but, back then, the brood was only about a third of the size it is now.

Before long, we had an ever-growing pile of eggs mounting up in our kitchen. With each passing day, another 6 eggs or so were being added. What to do with our new-found egg glut?

I didn’t want to have either leftover yolks or leftover whites going to waste, so I looked into making dishes that used whole eggs.

Here’s one savoury and one sweet recipe I decided on…

Pickled eggs – We’ve both lived nearly half a century but neither of us has ever eaten a pickled egg! They never look appetising sitting on a shelf, in jars, in a hot chip shop, for who knows how long! I didn’t have whole allspice, only ground, so my pickle liquid became a bit cloudy with a little sediment. You’re meant to leave them for a month before you eat them – so we’ll report back then.
Egg custard – This was a little disappointing to be honest – a bit unexciting. It had nothing over a traditional egg custard tart baked in a pastry case. Transforming it into either a crème caramel or crème brûlée are other good options.

Pickled eggs

2018-05-22 18:24:14

Serves 7

Ingredients

7 hard-boiled eggs
½tbs chilli flakes
1 pint distilled malt vinegar
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, rough chopped
½tbs white peppercorns
½tsp whole allspice

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Instructions

Tie the spices in a piece of muslin and boil gently in the vinegar for 5 minutes
Pour into a bowl and remove the spices. Leave to cool
Shell the eggs and pack into a sterilised, wide-necked jar
Fill with the cold vinegar to cover the eggs completely. Screw or tie down and leave for a month before eating

H is for Home Harbinger https://hisforhomeblog.com/

Egg custard

2018-05-22 18:09:01

Serves 4

Ingredients

568ml/1 pint full fat milk
4 eggs
50g caster sugar
2tsp vanilla extract
fresh nutmeg

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Instructions

Preheat the oven to 140ºC/Gas mark 1 and butter a round oven-proof dish
Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat until hot but not actually boiling
In a bowl that's large enough to take the milk as well, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla. Then, still whisking, pour in the hot milk
Sit the buttered dish in a roasting tin to make a bain marie. Strain the custard mixture through a sieve into the buttered dish, then grate some nutmeg generously over the top
Pour freshly boiled water into the tin, to come about halfway up the baking dish, and gingerly (you don't want slopping and spillage) put it into the oven and cook for 1½ hours. You want the custard to set but only just
Take the tin out of the oven, and the dish out of the tin, and let the custard cool a little before eating

By Nigella Lawson

Adapted from Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home

H is for Home Harbinger https://hisforhomeblog.com/

Etsy List: Easter egg hunt

The days are getting longer, spring lambs are appearing in the fields near our house and bulbs are flowering in the garden – Easter is on the way!

Easter is all about birth and rebirth… the egg is the quintessential symbol of the time. Here’s our own little egg hunt – an internet hunt! We’ve done the searching so you can simply click & view.

Perhaps even multi-task a bit – one hand for the keyboard, one hand for chocolate!

Easter egg hunt
Curated by H is for Home