Easter - Retro Food For Modern Times

Happy Easter everyone! I hope the bunny brought you all the chocolate eggs you wanted. I am also bringing the Easter classics of buns and eggs but in savoury form with some choux buns with truffled mushrooms and quail eggs. I wanted to use up the leftover quail eggs from the Nevilled Eggs. A quick search of my recipe spreadsheet led me to a beautiful book called Food Fashion Friends Fleur Wood. She is a designer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Coming from a former fashion designer the book is very glamorous so I had high hopes for this recipe!

(And yes, I have a recipe spreadsheet. And yes, I know that makes me the very opposite of the glamorous chic in the book!)

It turned out that I had a few more quail eggs than required for the choux buns so I also made one of Jamie Oliver’s dipping salts for quail eggs. He has three recipes, all of which sound delicious but I chose one with smoked paprika and cayenne.

Fleur Wood’s recipe has black caviar as an additional garnish for her eggs. I did not have any of this so I omitted it but I’m sure the buns would have been delicious with it. A little sprinkle of some parsley or chives might have been nice too.

The one thing that for me, did not work in this recipe were the quail’s eggs. They didn’t bring anything to the dish which was a bit disappointing as I was looking for something in which they would shine. The mushroom filling was so delicious that I would have been happy with just them or maybe a bit of goat’s or cream cheese added. Even in the photo from the book, the eggs look a little…out of place. Maybe Fleur was also trying to use up some quail eggs?

AAA Choux Buns — Picture via Food Fashion Friends

The choux buns worked like a dream which I was pleased about! So, whilst I was a bit disappointed that the eggs didn’t shine, the mushroom filling and the buns definitely put this in the “make again” territory. The Jamie Oliver dipping eggs were also a nice little bonus!

The Recipe – Mushrooms & Quail Egg Choux Buns

Incidentally, I had never cooked quail’s eggs before the Nevilled eggs. So, I had never realised quite how beautiful I would find their speckly outsides:

Or that they would have a gorgeous blue inside!

I am off to eat more eggs, of the chocolate variety! Have a great week!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! At Maison de la retro foods, we are supplementing our chocolate eggs with some North African Hamine Eggs. These came to us via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. The book offers two versions of this recipe. There is the traditional way:

In Egypt there are special shops selling them; there, after the eggs have been cooked for 3 or 4 hours, they are put under the ashes of a fire and left for as long as 8 hours – this makes them as creamy as butter”

– Good Housekeeping World Cookery

Never mind the pyramids and the Sphinx. Get me over to Egypt pronto for some of those buttery eggs!!!

Eggs Hamine – The Recipe

The non-traditional version of these eggs is so easy!

Put the brown outside skins of some onions into a saucepan of ocld water with the eggs and boil for 2 hours or as long as possible. The onion skins turn the shells of the eggs and the whites brown. Shell and halve the eggs and serve hot or cold with lemon wedges, salt, pepper and mixed spices”

I cooked my eggs in the slow cooker for a full 8 hours.

Pre – Water

4 hours – One of the eggs cracked during the cooking but did not ooze out like they do when they crack during normal boiling.

Eight hours!

Note, if you decide to make these in your slow cooker, the onion skins will stain your slow cooker brown along with the eggs. Get ready to soak and scrub to remove it!

Eight hours and fifteen minutes!

I sprinkled my egg with some salt and some dukkah and dug in! It was delicious. There was a faint taste of something – not exactly onion but slightly savoury to the egg which was different to a normal boiled egg. I would not say that it was buttery but the white seemed more delicate than a normal boiled egg.

I was also very surprised to see that the onion skin dye had penetrated not only into the white which became a gorgeous soft caramel colour but also the yolk! This was startling because it is so strange to have a monochrome egg!

These were nice and an interesting experiment but for me, it was a long time to wait for a fancy boiled egg so I will probably not make them again. If I ever do get to Egypt though, I will be making a breakfast beeline for the Hamine Eggs shops!

Making these eggs might be a fun thing to do with kids for Easter or for a science project on osmosis.

Happy Easter everyone!

Category: Easter

The Recipe – Mushrooms & Quail Egg Choux Buns

Eggs Hamine – The Recipe