Recently I have been eating the best sausages I have ever encountered, from Hyden Organics. I was very pleased to score some of the sausage meat and some of their eggs so Dani could create cracking Hyden Organics Scotch eggs. They were topping.
When we noshed on these orbs we had a simply spiffing bottle of Morey villages. It was a 2007, a vintage some people are sniffy about, but the qualities of the wine showed pulsingly pleasurably in this year. Suited the skeggs quite wonderfully.
The sausages I have been eating have been Hyden Organics pork and wild garlic flavour. The pork is from Oxford Sandy and Black pigs, which by now I am convinced make flesh of the tastiest order. As I wrote in my first piece about them, Hyden Organics are organic meat producers and I am sure their sympathetic treatment results in superior flavour.
When at the last Hampshire Farmers’ Market we saw Hyden were offering some of the sausage meat unskinned – our minds immediately turned to orb creation. When mentioning this to Hyden’s boss man he insisted we try some of his Bantam eggs for the core of the skeggs.
As you may know Bantams are a small breed of chicken and so the eggs are smaller than usual. Dani is modelling one (along with a normal hen’s egg, on the right and left of the picture respectively). I grew up with Bantams in my back garden (named, after their primary characteristics, by my dear sister as Blacky, Whitey and Runny) and knew their eggs were tasty. I thought they’d make superior sausage spheres.
The recipe was as given before, but once the eggs were boiling in the pan they were taken off the heat for three minutes before cooling the eggs in copious volumes of cold water. This was a guess; see below how accurate it was to get molten yolks…
The eggs required extremely exacting shell skinning skill. Breaking the shell without shattering the whole egg and yolk was difficult. Well done Editor Dani for doing it with furious concentration and no swearing.
Hyden Organics pork and wild garlic sausage meat is a bit damper than other meat Dani has made orbs from, but he managed to wrap the Bantam eggs and breadcrumb them again with perfect precision with a paucity of profanity.
Once wrapped in meat and crumbed they were deep-fried for three minutes then transferred to an oven at 160°C for a further three minutes. They were then ready!
Were the yolks liquid? See below:
The sausage meat tasted fantastic; really porky with a good garlic character. Premier pig! I really loved the taste of the Bantam eggs, but the yolks do have a slightly thicker texture than normal chicken eggs that Dani was a touch perturbed by. I thought that was just fine as the flavour was so good.
Hyden Organics clearly remain top flight producers of animal products, and with their produce Dani reached, what is up until this point, his zenith of Scotch egg production. They were wizard weasel!
I’ll give you a note of the wine we drank with the orbs.
Morey-Saint-Denis ‘Clos Solon’ 2007, Domaine Fourrier
A rapturously pleasurable nose that was blooming with the great fruit of the vintage and suffused with the enchanting scented earthiness of Morey. It smelled highly attractively and for a village wine had quite a lot of complexity. Oak and alcohol were not excessive and the whole impression of the nose was one of sybaritic gratification. Morey could well be the best village in the Cote de Nuits, and this sniffed up like it could defend that reputation. The palate was almost as lustfully enjoyable but it seemed like it kept its grey nylon socks on whilst it was trying to get down to it – it was a touch less committed to lustful pleasure. This was mainly due to a slightly high acid level that seemed just a hint out of balance. The tannins were structured but seductive and the fruit gorgeous. Very long, but if I’m really, rudely picky the palate might have been lacking the highest levels of complexity one could want from a village wine, as well as its balance not decking a Hare Krishna with the first blow. But that’s me being a really critical sod; it was a really pleasurable wine and well-worth seeking out. Drink over the next couple of years.