Since living in London and becoming a full time food blogger, I have become more aware of what makes great, quality tasting food. Where the ingredients of the dishes you eat come from is one of the major factor of what allows a dish to be more flavoursome and appetising. You will often find this applies a lot to diary products, such as eggs. Using premium, free range eggs can make a massive difference to a dish when the same dish is made with non-free range and lower quality eggs.
I recently had a masterclass at Food at 52 in Shoreditch, who had teamed up with Heritage Breeds premium eggs to show us what divine tasting dishes that can be made using a range of their different types of eggs. Using Heritage Breeds eggs is not only more ethical but it sure does make for delicious tasting eggs when the hens are happy.
I’m sure most of you are thinking, what makes Heritage Breeds so premium compared to other free range eggs found in the supermarkets? Their flame orange yolks and high quality whites are produced by allowing their hens to have a lot more space, typically Heritage Breeds are reared in smaller flocks and the hens are hand picked. Often enough the farms are a 1/3 of your usual free range farms, therefore the chickens have a lot more room and access to plenty of shade. Their wholesome vegetarian feeds are tailored to each of the flocks to adapt to their needs by an animal nutritionist, allowing each flock to produce the best quality eggs possible.
We each got ourselves our own stations at the Food at 52 cooking table and within our groups, we had started to prepare a range of different dishes using lovely Heritage Breeds eggs.
For the first dish, we experimented with making the pastry for smoked trout, asparagus and parmesan tartlets, where we used the copper maran eggs by Heritage Breeds.
The dough was the set and we were ready to fill the pastry. However, as we didn’t have time to make the filling the wonderful guys at Food at 52 had already made us. However, we garnished them with smoked salmon and poached Heritage Breeds speckled quail eggs. John showed us a fantastic way to poach the tiny quail eggs in a matter of minutes!
Whilst the tartlets were baking, we experimented with a Nicoise salad, a salad that originated from the French city of Nice. We used lightly boiled Heritage Breeds’ Gladys May’s duck eggs to finish off the salad. What amazed me the most was how perfectly porcelain white the shells were.
For our third dish, we soft boiled Heritage Breeds’ Royal Legbar eggs to recreate the famous dippy eggs and soldiers breakfast treat. The flavours that came through from the Royal Legbar yolks were incredible. It would definitely take those weekend breakfasts to a whole new level.
Finally, we made a dessert using the Heritage Breeds flame orange yolked copper marans to make an Amaretti Semi-Freddo. If you don’t know what Amaretti Semi-Freddo is, you simply haven’t lived. It is an incredible dessert made with cream, eggs, sugar, amaretti biscuits, pistachios and a drizzling of Amaretto. It is then frozen for a few hours before being served and it is absolutely delectable.
I was just amazed by how many of these dishes required eggs as a main ingredient in the preparation, therefore quality, premium eggs would only encourage a better result. It was so great to learn more about Heritage Breed eggs and it is safe to say i’m a convert!
Also, I just want to say a massive thank you to Emily and John for looking after us so well and teaching so many new cooking techniques and dishes during our time at Food at 52.
Until next time…
