Mini Scotch Egg with Simple Arugula Salad

Today's recipe is very simple Scotch egg. To make it a bit more interesting and special, I made it with quail eggs, not regular eggs. Mini scotch eggs are great both as finger foods for a party or as your afternoon snack. With simple arugula salad, you can enjoy them together as lunch.


Mini Scotch Egg with Simple Arugula Salad

(Yield: 9-10 scotch eggs / Cooking time: 15 minutes)

Ingredients:
+ 10-12 quail eggs (prepare a few extras, in case a few quail eggs break)
+ 2 Italian chicken sausages
+ panko bread crumbs
+ vegetable oil for frying
+ whole grain mustard

Simple green salad
+ arugula
+ simple sherry vinaigrette*
+ shaved parmesan cheese

* Simple sherry vinaigrette is just a 'simple' mix of two parts of good quality olive oil and one part of sherry vinegar. Then, season the mix with salt and pepper. If you want to hold the vinaigrette for hours, you should emulsify the oil and vinegar with vigorous whisk. However, if you are serving the salad right away, and if you make only a small portion of vinaigrette, you can just put everything in a small container tightly covered with a lid and shake well until oil and vinegar is emulsified.




Procedures:

1. First, we need to prepare soft boiled quail eggs. Bring a pot of water to rapid boil. Add quail eggs gently to the boiling water and cook for 2 minutes 15 seconds. Shock them into icy water immediately to stop any further cooking process.


2. The quail eggs are really soft, so peel the quail eggs extra-gently and store them in icy water. I could salvage only nine quail eggs from a dozen. Some membranes are hard to get rid of, but they will separate from the eggs eventually in the icy water.


3. Remove sausage casing and divide the sausage meat into equal portion of the number of quail eggs.


4. Cover the quail eggs with sausage meats. Just make sure the quail eggs are not wet so the meat can easily cling to the eggs.


5. Coat the sausage meat with panko bread crumbs.


6. Fry scotch eggs in 325°F (163°C) frying oil for three minutes. Oil temperature will drop as soon as the cold scotch eggs hit the oil. So, heat vegetable oil to a bit higher temperature before adding the eggs.


7. Drain excess oil by laying those fried scotch eggs over a paper towel.


* When you slice the egg, the sausage meat should be cooked through, but yolk should still be runny.


8. Top each Scotch egg with a drop of whole grain mustard. Serve over a simple green salad.


Enjoy~