Goose egg & toasty soldiers

Peculiar eggs have been quite the thing this Easter, with Clarence Court touting everything from the mighty ostrich to the wee bantam and everything in between.

Imagine my delight when I spotted a couple of goose eggs in my local Waitrose, reduced from £6.99 each to a piffling 49p.

A goose egg is about three times the size of a hen’s egg, so it’s perfect for an omelette or scrambled egg portion for one. It also has a great big yolk, and makes a nice fried egg (although it takes a while to cook so you need to go easy on the heat).

My preferred egg-cooking method though is the good old boiled egg with toasty soldiers.

Sadly, I didn’t have a goose egg sized egg cup.

I brought some water to the boil, added my egg and boiled it for 10 minutes, for a soft yolk and perfectly set white.

It was slightly stronger in flavour than a hen’s egg, with a creamier yolk. And much easier to get my soldiers in.

If you fancy trying peculiar eggs for yourself, why not check out Food Urchin’s fab Scotch ostrich egg or this pheasant egg salad in the New York Times.

Peculiar Pantry: Vegan Marshmallows

So, vegan marshmallows. Take a standard egg-free marshmallow recipe and substitute agar agar for the gelatin – simple, huh?

Well, no.

They didn’t really work. In fact, they were more like crusty jellies.

Has anyone had any success with these?

Peculiar Pantry: Nuclear Grapefruit Curd

Lemon curd is something I’ve never really got round to making. I’ve made jam plenty of times, I’ve been known to dabble in chutney. But I always feared the curd.

I expect it’s the eggs. Eggs can be pretty scary. They scramble and curdle and do all sorts of bad things when you’re least expecting it. So I avoided the curd. I just didn’t want a curdled curd. You can’t blame me.

Until this week it is. When I discovered that you CAN’T SCRAMBLE LEMON CURD. Or grapefruit curd for that matter. Why? Well the acid from the juice and the sugar stop the eggs from scrambling. Simples. You can boil it if you want, it just won’t scramble (I tried it).

Even better, I found this incredibly cheaty way of making citrus curd in the microwave. I am not normally a fan of nuking my food, but this is so damn easy I thought I’d give it a go.

This is what you’ll need:

In fact, you’ll probably only need half the grapefruit.

Nuclear Grapefruit Curd

Ingredients

120ml grapefruit juice (I used a pink one, but it was quite sweet so I’d recommend a normal one. Lemons or limes would work well too)

4 egg yolks

125g caster sugar

Method

Whisk together all the ingredients.

Microwave on full power for 30 seconds.

Whisk like hell.

Microwave for 30 seconds.

Whisk. Microwave. Whisk. Microwave. You get the picture.

4 minutes of microwave time later and you’ll have a nice thick, gloopy (non curdled) pink grapefruit curd.

Once you’ve made it, you could spread it thickly on toast, swirl it through some ice cream or just keep dipping your finger in the jar until it’s all gone. Ahem.