Finally, eggs are reclaiming their rightful place in our culinary culture. There are so many exciting things that you can do with them beyond the everyday frying, boiling and scrambling that we work into our breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. We've had free-range, organic, barn-raised and various other designations introduced to entice shoppers into putting more eggs into their baskets, but I'm a Clarence Court convert. You could eat a different Clarence Court egg (www.clarencecourt.co.uk) every day of the week and not come across any of the above. Instead, the box names the variety of bird or who rears them, which for me is much more relevant and a fantastic dinner-party conversation piece. Good-quality eggs are becoming such a star ingredient that there is now a British Egg Week, which starts on October 10. Hopefully, you'll all take the opportunity to experiment with some delicious, fuss-free egg recipes like the ones below.
Fried Gladys May's Braddock White duck's egg with chorizo and sea aster
Serves 4
Chorizo gives a nice kick to a plain old fried egg-except in this case, it's not a plain old fried egg at all, as it's a duck egg. We've been using Trealy Farm chorizo (www.trealyfarm.com) for some time now-the company makes the best British chorizo I've tried, and it's as close to the Spanish version as you'll find. Sea aster, a wild seashore vegetable, has found its way into the shops in a cultivated form and is pretty good, I must say. If you can't get hold of it, you could use young spinach leaves. Ingredients
200g-250g cooking chorizo A couple tablespoons of olive oil 4 Braddock White duck's eggs A handful of sea aster Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Remove the skin from the chorizo and chop the meat up as finely as you can. Heat a tablespoon of the olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan. Gently cook the chorizo in the olive oil for 5-6 minutes, stirring and breaking it up as it's cooking, then put it to one side and keep it warm.
Fry the eggs in the rest of the olive oil and transfer onto warm serving plates. Quickly wilt the sea aster in the same pan and remove from the heat. Spoon the chorizo around the eggs and scatter the sea aster over them.
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