Leek, Chive And Caper Scotch Eggs by Mildreds

For Chantal’s birthday party, I made some Scotch eggs with a delicious herby dipping sauce. This is the veggie version.

This one is based a recipe from the London vegetarian restaurant Mildreds. I recently got their cookbook “Mildreds: The Vegetarian Cookbook” and found the online version of the recipe over at Food Republic. As I wanted to serve something “snack size”, I made them with quail eggs instead of hen eggs and served them with the same Bois Boudran sauce as I did with the other Scotch eggs.

The recipe

2 lbs/900g potatoes, peeled and cut into even-sized pieces
2½ tbsp/40g butter
2 large leeks, trimmed, cleaned and finely sliced
1 tbsp/20g Dijon mustard
1 tbsp/20g whole-grain mustard
1 bunch of chives, finely snipped
2 ½ tbsp/50g capers, drained and coarsely chopped
8 large eggs, plus 3 eggs, beaten
about ¾ cup / 200g all-purpose flour
about 3½ cups / 200g panko bread crumbs
vegetable oil, for frying
Note: I obviously used quail eggs (18) and 2 regular eggs for the egg wash

Cook the potatoes in boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes, or until tender. Drain and mash until smooth.
In the meantime melt the butter in a frying pan, add the leeks, and cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes, or until just tender.
Let the leek cool, then add to the mashed potatoes along with the 2 mustards, chives, and capers. Stir to combine and let cool.
While the mixture is cooling, cook the whole eggs in a saucepan of boiling water for 4 minutes. Drain and refresh in cold water, then shell (Note: I boiled the quail eggs for 2½ minutes and refreshed them in ice water for 20 minutes before shelling)
Divide the cooled potatoes into eight equal portions. Arrange the flour, beaten egg, and bread crumbs in shallow bowls. Roll the eggs in the flour. Flatten a portion of mashed potatoes with your palm and fold it around the egg to form a ball. Roll this in the flour, then dip it into the beaten egg and roll it in the bread crumbs. Set on a platter, repeat with the remaining eggs, then let chill in the fridge. (Note: for the quail eggs I needed to use a portion of mash that was slightly bigger than a golf ball)
Half-fill a large saucepan or deep-fryer with vegetable oil and heat to 355°F/180°C. Cook the eggs in batches for 5 minutes until golden brown. (Note: the Scotch quail eggs only needed about 2 minutes)

What worked and what didn’t:
Of course, preparing scotch eggs yourself is time-consuming and using quails eggs makes it a bit harder (especially shelling them) and longer as you are making more of them. But it was well worth it as also these vegetarian Scotch Eggs were very nice.

The leek, chives, mustard and caper mash itself is delicious and if you just add a good splash of warm milk and some salt when combining you’ll have one hell of a side dish.

The herby mash interior of the Scotch eggs was smooth – intensified with the still slightly runny yolks of the quail’s egg – and therefore provided an even greater contrast to the ultra crispy panko coating. They not were gone immediately, but I guess that was due to a 1:8 veggies to carnivores ratio and an abundance of the meaty Scotch quail’s eggs…

Recipe accuracy:
The recipe is accurate, easy to follow and for me yielded 18 Scotch quails eggs and still had about 1/5th of the mashed potatoes left (no complaints here). To help to eat and dipping, I halved them and added 1 teaspoon of bois boudran sauce on top, so you’d have 36 servings (or Scotch eggs for dinner for a couple days)

Suggested tweaks:
The leek and chives balanced nicely with the two mustards and capers, but it left me wondering if I could use other herbs instead/as well.

Verdict: 8/10; Will be made again. If not in the shape or form of a Scotch egg, then definitely as a side dish of mashed potatoes.