A little ode to the humble, unassuming egg this morning, something roughly formed I scribbled down before breakfast this morning as my attempt to answer the question of what I should make with the unexpectedly generous bounty of eggs I was handed on a farm visit yesterday.

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One of the perks of my job is sometimes I get the coolest freebies for my consideration. Clearly wishing to ensure their products are the ones I recommend on my blog and on Instagram I’m very lucky that I was simply given the majority of Le Creuset products in my kitchen, and thanks to a little competition I ran a few months ago to win a years worth of vibrantly orange-yolked Clarence Court eggs (which included my no-recipe method for making a mustardy chicken schnitzel topped with a fried egg and served with a lemony parmesan salad which I’ve embedded below), I too was gifted the same.

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This is where this happy ‘problem’ of too many eggs started. I’d already used my stash of coupons to buy a round dozen a few days before, and my online grocery delivery came with another dozen for baking.

And then yesterday I spent a lovely, sunny hour at Longland Farm, a frankly excellent chicken, duck, turkey and goose farm near my parents house here on the Kent Downs who were kind enough to let me come meet all their field-reared birds (as well as their adorable alpacas) and chat to them for a piece I’m writing for eco-focused website The Mindful Fork. As I was leaving, as well as being generous enough to top up my supply of goose fat (we ordered our frankly brilliant Christmas goose from Longland, and I’ve been doing my roast potatoes in the leftover fat ever since) but they also offered me a tray of eggs. After seeing all the happy hens trotting about, how could I say no?

But, arriving home and setting my beautiful tray of variously hued eggs down on the dining room table, and heading into the kitchen for a glass of water, surveying the healthy amount of eggs I already had in stock I asked myself: what on earth am I going to do with 53 eggs?

I don’t think anyone who is not a vegan can argue that an egg is not the most versatile thing in the kitchen. The last time I had this many, I actually had more: the two trays, amounting to 60 eggs - 30 hen and 30 duck obtained for us at the start of the first lockdown when eggs were a hot commodity by our gardener whose brother is an egg farmer - were literal life savers and formed the backbone of the majority of our family meals once my father’s Brexit-stoked meat stockpile in the garage freezer started to dwindle.

The abundance of duck eggs also taught me how to make a Duck Egg Victoria Sponge.

Obviously I’m never going to say no to good, field-reared, free range local eggs, but as eggs are not as easily preserved (more on that in a moment) as say if someone had given me a glut of strawberries ripe for jamming (or, as happened last year I saw a jamming tray cheap, snapped it up, then discovered there was a national jam sugar shortage) I need to figure out what I’m going to make with them.

Happily, my mother and I are out to lunch today, so I’ve told her to fish a couple of empty egg boxes out of the recycling so she can take away as many as she wishes when she comes to pick me up: my father (the inventor of this brilliant egg, chorizo and tomato scramble I like to pile into breakfast tacos) enjoys a couple of eggs for breakfast most mornings, and unlike me who prefers to stick to savoury, she’s the real baker in the family.

But what to do with the rest, past the carrot cake I’d planned to make over the Bank Holiday weekend, and my usual beloved breakfast of egg on toast served with a drizzle of something (usually my homemade chilli sauce, but right now White Mausu’s brilliant Cashew Crunch)?

Well, my first thought was to look up different ways eggs can be preserved.

I’ve always wanted to play around with salt curing egg yolks until they’re jammy and you can grate them over pasta so I’ll be sure to set a couple of those going tonight, freezing the whites for future meringues, though I can’t really call my last attempt at yolk preservation using the soy cured yolk method in Yotam Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage’s otherwise brilliant book Flavour a success.

Chinese-style salted eggs are also of interest, even though my bounty is for hens, not duck eggs, but I think I’ll leave century eggs well alone as something I don’t think I’m quite ready for.

Stepping away from the idea of longer term preservation, you just have to look at all the different recipes I’ve shared over the years involving eggs (and this is just online, ignoring my cookbooks and various print features) to be able to properly celebrate the humble egg’s versatility.

I think the first rule of enjoying eggs and adding eggs to meals is to observe the rule that there is not much that can’t be improved by sticking a beautifully fried egg1 on top - something I apparently became so zealous about writing my first cookbook for students that my editor had to warn me not to repeat the trick too many times in the book!

I stick by this method, because for me over the years it has helped yield so many satisfying, often cheap meals such as my Green Eggs & Ham recipe I recreated from brunch at The Huckleberry Cafe in Los Angeles, my simple Mushrooms, Leeks & Fried Eggs on Toast, Korean-style Kimbap with Sesame Spinach, and these Hoisin Spinach Noodles whose ‘proper meal’ status hinges on that sunny side up egg.

The early 2010’s shakshuka craze reminded us all of how delicious they are baked, again both adding a welcome hit of protein to dinner (or brunch), but also setting us all down the path of seeking that perfectly golden, runny yolk which before was the prize of the classic poached or runny middled boiled egg (which for me must always be served with a generous helping of anchovy butter soldiers on the side for dunking). One of my everlasting memories of the cookbook shoot for One Pan Pescatarian was watching the brilliant food stylist and home economist Octavia Squire sitting cross legged in front of the oven, Bake-Off style to ensure the perfect yolks in my Dhal Baked Eggs with Chickpeas.

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I will forever remember this recipe for Baked Eggs with Potatoes and Black Pudding as something I created the day my first ever book was published: J and I shared it together for a late dinner in our early days as a couple as we unpicked the excitement of the day I finally became an author. Then you’ve got the Baked Eggs with Chickpeas, Tomatoes and Basil I used to make when I had just me to cook for, the One Pan Veggie English Breakfast we used to enjoy at the weekends after we first moved in together, and the Potato Hash with Tomatoes, Peppers and Kale which remains one of the most popular recipes I’ve written for the BBC, from the early days when I still could not believe they, the BBC, wanted me, a self taught home cook who had just jacked in her political career to write recipes in a tiny West London kitchen.

A quiche or a frittata is also a surefire way to make your way through a lot of whole eggs quickly. My Roasted Summer Vegetable & Feta Quiche is always a favourite, if you’ve not yet tried using potato gnocchi in a frittata instead of potatoes I need to point you in the direction of my Spinach & Mushroom Gnocchi Frittata, and of course the topic of all the different things you can add to an egg mixture in a muffin pan is well documented.

Oh, and whilst we’re talking all things quiche, elsewhere on food Substack Jolene Handy has a lovely ode to the quiche on her front page right now discussing this wonderful ‘custard in a fancy dress’:

Time Travel Kitchen

Time Travel Kitchen

I was my own guest for lunch this week. More on that in a minute. A couple of weeks ago a friend who’d inherited a heap of cookbooks graciously decided to give them all to me — a “WOW!” gift if ever there was one. Books are precious things, but there was nothing genteel in the maniacal way I tore through the bags and boxes…

2 months ago · 25 likes · 51 comments · Jolene

Another area where a simple egg more than pulls its weight is in making batters: pancakes are the obvious choice, made a meal with a savoury application such as these crepe-style pancakes wrapped around a creamy mushroom filling, in this recipe for a Ham, Egg & Spinach Dutch Baby Pancake, or even cloaking fat, juicy sausages in my slightly unusual Blackberry Toad in the Hole.

Of course whilst Easter is over, I could still devil my eggs. I challenge you to find someone who enjoys an egg salad sandwich who won’t also say yes to a good devilled egg, and you need quite a few eggs to make a good batch. Over the years I’ve made Devilled Eggs Royale (with a hollandaise-spiked yolk, a scroll of smoked salmon, and a little touch of lumpfish caviar finished with a few fronds of dill), Green Eggs and Ham Devilled Eggs (with wild garlic pesto and parma ham), Asian Devilled Eggs (enriched with Japanese kewpie mayonnaise and miso, topped with a dab of sriracha, and a sprinkle of fresh chopped coriander, finely sliced spring onion and a couple of black sesame seeds), and Devilled Spiders Eggs for Halloween (again flavoured with pesto, and topped with ‘spiders’ made from black olive halves, preserved red pepper eyes, and nori sheet legs).

In this vein, I also have a simple recipe for a Devilled Egg Potato Salad you must sample.

And, whilst we’re on the topic of Devilled Eggs, I read a brilliant piece by Anne Byrne the other week which served as a love letter to these little bites of brilliance that really is worth your time:

Anne Byrn: Between the Layers

The Devil Made Me Do It

FOR YEARS MY COUSIN MARGARET BROUGHT DEVILED EGGS to our family’s Easter lunch. I recall she volunteered cautiously at first, saying she’d never made them before. Then she arrives with not one plate, but a three-story masterpiece of deviled eggs. Ruffled lettuce kept the eggs from sliding en route to lunch, and the hot-pink camelli…

2 months ago · 19 likes · 59 comments · Anne Byrn

Somewhere I don’t think the humble egg gets enough accolades is as a binder: they literally help hold everything together from cakes to fritters, which is why the vegan food industry is so pre-occupied with egg substitutes. We’ll be here forever if I run through every egg-containing baking recipe I’ve ever produced, but I don’t want to let you go without pointing you in the direction of my gently Indian spiced Courgette Fritters with Mango Chutney Yogurt now summer is coming, my Easy Okonomikyaki recipe everyone seems to adore because really, eggs and cabbage fried up together are a total kitchen win, and of course my Asian-style Tuna and Kimchee Cakes from my last newsletter who need an egg to keep everything together before they hit the pan.

Oh, and don’t forget egg fried rice. If you’re roasting a chicken anytime soon save some leftovers to make my Chicken Fried Rice, or if you’re hankering after something a little fancier, my Thai-style Prawn & Pineapple Fried Rice just would not be the same without the little nuggets of roughly fried egg scattered throughout.

Having sat down and tapped out this piece with my morning cup of green tea just because I felt like scribbling something down (way to procrastinate the article I’m actually supposed to be writing about my farm visit) I’ve realised that, actually, I’m not going to have any problems making my way through this incredibly generous egg bounty at all; it’s a heartening thought.

What would you be making with all these eggs, if you were to step into my kitchen instead of me on this cloudy Wednesday morning?

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Food 52 tested 42 different ways of frying eggs, and their report of this experiment is well worth a read.

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