Scotch

Just over a week ago I took delivery of a couple of kilograms of pork Scotch fillet from Coltish Pork. Unfortunately I neglected to say that I wanted my Scotch in the piece, and so received it in steak form. They offered to take it back, but no, I wanted the challenge, so what to do. Again it took a little while, but given the fun I had doing the “Herbs & Spices” cooking class recently, plus my wonderful husband had added a coffee/spice grinder to my cupboard of appliances, I just had to make an Indian Curry.

I dragged out all my Asian/Indian cookbooks and started pouring over them for the right recipe, and this is what I decided on – Mangalorean Pork Bafath from The Food of India – a journey for food lovers. This recipe is from the South of India and uses Kashmiri Chillies of which I had none! So I re-jigged the recipe for our taste, without 20 Kashmiri Chillies and 6 green chillies that their recipe called for !!!! It still has a bit of a kick to it allowing us to enjoy the beautiful blend of spices together with the delicious pork. While curry is normally served with rice, I chose to serve it with smoked sweet potato, a simple yoghurt and mint raita and oven baked tiny tomatoes – surprisingly the flavours went really well together.

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There was plenty of the curry left over, so portioned it out into vac bags, sealed them and we now have curry in the freezer for when we are going to be very busy on other jobs and there is no time to cook.

With the preparation for the curry, I decided to keep the pork in largish pieces as the steaks weren’t very thick, but I did trim most of the fat off (probably a little too much in hindsight). Not wanting to waste the trimmings, I cut them up into small morcels and dragged out my weary old Kenwood Chef – still going, just, after more than 31 years! I have a mincing attachment for it, so the lean off-cuts were put through the course cutter, vac sealed and frozen for another day. The fattier off-cuts were mixed with sage, garlic, cracked pepper, salt and red wine and minced twice, first through the course cutter, then most of it was put back through the finer cutter. Both grades of sausage went into the bowl of the Kenwood, and with the K beater in place, was mixed for a few minutes until it was well combined. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this sausage mince – Scotch Quail Eggs.

I like my finished Scotch Eggs to be the size of a normal hen’s egg, so use either quail eggs or small pullets eggs, when I can get them, and while I used my own sausage mince, you could use some of your favourite sausages and just remove the casings – pure pork or pork, sage and onion would be delicious, but there is no reason why you couldn’t use beef or chicken either.

Wanting a different way to serve my Scotch Eggs, I hit the net – how boring. I know they are quintessentially picnic food, and that was pretty much all that I saw – tomato, lettuce, cucumber! So this is what I did…

Scotch Quail Eggs served on a bed of pureed pumpkin with beetroot two ways (pureed and thinly sliced), parsnip chips and a little carrot top pesto to finish it off.

Yes, I also made more than needed, so have three waiting in the fridge for a light lunch or picnic this week.

Now for outside… Great excitement! Finally, the posts have arrived for the espaliering, so poor Gary is hard at work measuring, sawing, leveling, etc.

Soon we will be able to train all the fruit trees accordingly and big foot – AKA Duchess, will not be running all over my carefully prepared garden beds. The frames are also going up for all things climbing! I even picked our first three strawberries yesterday – and we have another resident in the garden!