Scotch Eggs

Scotch Eggs

• 8 Large Eggs, hard boiled and peeled
  
• 2 tubes of bulk sausage (1.5 - 2 lbs, depending on how large the eggs are)
  
• Bread crumbs
  
• Flour
  

Simply: enrobe/encase the eggs with sausage, coat with breadcrumbs, and fry (or bake).

Tips/tricks:

• Coat (roll) the eggs with flour -- it helps the sausage stick to them. I'd do two coats, five or so minutes apart.
  
• Keep the sausage cool, it makes it more sticky... so either work fast, have a partner helping, or form all the balls first & coat them with crumbs afterward.
  
• Make an un-even thin sausage patty, with the patty in one hand, place an egg in the center of the patty, then fold & smoosh the sausage around the egg until it is completely enclosed, like a pork & egg version of nigiri.
  

The hard part: Next to getting the sausage to stick to the boiled & peeled eggs (which if you follow the tips above won't be the hard part), the hardest part is cooking the big sausage balls all the way through, evenly. Baking would probably be a better solution (and perhaps a skosh healthier).


I first heard of these "Scotch Eggs" back in 1994. Several of us from RAF Mildenhall had taken some leave and gone down to attend the Reading Festival -- this enormous 3-day outdoor music festival (think Woodstock). We all made a nice big camp in one of the fields, and the camp right next to ours was a big group of Scots. One of them was this hilarious, rough (and bald as an egg herself) Scottish chick who should have had a career in stand up comedy. She wandered into our camp one day munching something, cracking jokes, and making fun of everyone with hangovers. After trying to discretely figure out what the heck she was eating, I finally just asked... and she told me all about Scotch Eggs (although I think her eggs were pickled). Last night was my third time making these... and I had told myself after the second time that the NEXT time I would try coating the eggs with flour first, since getting sausage to stick to slippery eggs was difficult (understatement). Bingo!

[edited to get rid of a code snippet that had somehow found its way in]

Richland Restaurants

Mmm... those who know me know I'm passionate about food -- so I was glad that Cari McGee took the initiative to post a few restaurant reviews for some of my favorite places to eat in Richland. Make sure to swing by and read her reviews (and my comments), and provide your own input.
Stone Soup
Rosy's Diner
Atomic Brewpub
Cafe at Queensgate

[edited for link corrections]

Cognoprescience

There's a running almost-joke between me and some of my friends. Like many creative people with ADHD, I'm constantly coming up with ideas. Some far fetched, some fairly down to earth, some complex, some brilliantly simple. The funny part is that without exception any ideas I come up with are patented or at least announced via a press release anywhere from 2 days to 2 years after I think them up.
I've heard of the philosophy that "there are no new ideas" -- but this has reached a level of incredulity. Every. Single. Time. The average time span between my brainstorm and someone else coming out with it seems to be about 3 months... often too short of a time for me to realistically pull any resources together and develop my idea into a product/service.
So what I really need to do, since it seems that I most likely won't have the opportunity to benefit from my ideas directly, is to find a way to benefit from the fact that I have these ideas at all -- and before they're announced. So if you're in charge of a giant think tank that wants to contract me to sole-source provide you with a head-start on what will be hitting the markets/internet, let me know :)

And until someone decides to take me up on that offer, I'm going to start throwing my ideas on this blog as I have time. So here are a few I had yesterday evening and this afternoon.

I hate unlocking my phone/PDA. It's a pain, but a necessary pain. I believe the technology and expertise exists for someone to develop a removable memory card (e.g., SD) that not only can function as a normal storage device, but also contains the circuitry necessary to communicate with a corresponding linked chip via wireless (RFID, wifi, zigbee, NFC, or proprietary) . The two chips/devices working in tandem with some software on the smartphone itself would utilize PKI techniques to ensure that my smartphone was unlocked whenever it was within range of my person, and automatically locked if it goes out of range. Simple, right? Get to work, Eye-Fi dudes :)

The idea I had this afternoon is a pretty simple idea that would be fairly tricky technically... basically I want a couple things:
I'd like the ability to set my double-home button push on the iPhone to be able to launch any application I desire. This isn't mandatory for the success of the idea, but would be very useful.
And I'd like an application that would launch another application on my iPhone by using voice recognition.
Example -- when driving, I often hear songs on the radio station which I'm unfamiliar with. The station does a lousy job (as in almost never) of announcing the artist & title, so I'm left fumbling for my iPhone so I can page through my app listings to find & launch Midomi. It'd be sweet if I could just double-tap home to launch my "voice launchpad" and then tell it, "Midomi."

There you go. Get to work, invisible code monkeys.

Lamb Curry

I made some phenomenally tasty lamb curry last night, followed by some yummy dessert. My house smelled like an Indian restaurant -- the only thing missing was some naan bread.
Lamb Curry
1 sweet potato, peeled & cubed
1/2 carrot, cubed
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 jalapeño or other pepper, diced
1 stick of celery, diced
1/2 cup of sun-dried tomatoes, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 Tbsp garlic, diced
3 medium tomatoes, cubed
1 lb. lamb steak, cut into 3/4 inch cubes
1 tsp black pepper, ground
1 cup red wine
1 package of S&B - Golden Curry Sauce Mix, chopped up well
1 1/2 Tbsp Mae Ploy Yellow Curry paste
1 Tbsp Mae Ploy Red Curry paste

Cut & add the ingredients in the order listed to a slow-cooker and mix well.
I assembled everything the night before and put it into the refridgerator overnight. The next day I had Carmen take it out & plug it in on low when she got up -- so it was going pretty much all day.

When I got home, I made up some saffron rice:

Saffron Rice
2 cups water
1 1/4 cups jasmine rice
1 tsp salt
1 pinch of saffron

Mix & bring to a boil, put on simmer and let cook for 20 minutes. Fluff.

That was dinner... and it was really, really good. I would have felt a bit better had I actually made the curry myself -- I have everything I need (including the fermented shrimp paste -- don't ask). But the night I assembled everything I was also making our our regular dinner for that evening (Eggplant Parmesean) as well as cooking up some organic carrot puree for Hunter... so I don't feel *too* bad about using store-bought curries. It ended up tasting very close to a Massamam style curry. Mmmm.

For dessert, I made Indian Spiced Rice Pudding -- a recipe I saw yesterday on one of the cooking blogs I follow, http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/

I only ended up making a small modification -- I didn't feel like going spice-cabinet-spelunking to look for my nutmeg pods and then getting the mace from them (too much work). So instead of mace I ended up using a scant 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg & 1/4 tsp of allspice. And fresh ground cardamom.

[edited to fix tags]

Chewy Cherry Jewels

These are chewy gelatin/jelly candies, similar to the famous Aplets & Cotlets.
2 c applesauce
1 c sugar
3 pkgs unflavored gelatin
1 box (3oz ) cherry flavored gelatin (jell-o, etc)
2 Tbsp lemonjuice
2 Tbsp cornstarch
---
1 c chopped dried cranberries (craisins)
1 tsp vanilla
1 c nuts, chopped (optional)
heavy aluminum foil
cornstarch

Combine first 6 ingredients in a pot & let sit about 5 minutes while you line a baking pan or shallow-sided cookie sheet with heavy aluminum foil.
Cook the mixture, stirring occasionally, until it reaches a boil.  If using craisins, dump them in now.  Continue to cook it for another 2 or 3 minutes, then pull off the stove and stir in the vanilla and nuts (if you're using them).  Pour into the lined baking pan & let sit until cool.  You can put it into the freezer to set up once it's cooled down a bit.   After it's well set, peel off the aluminum foil, cut into pieces, and dust the pieces with cornstarch (doesn't get sticky & won't affect the taste, unlike powdered sugar).