With the obligatory egg pun out of the way, we check out quails’ eggs, duck eggs, hen eggs and, astoundingly, an Ostrich egg.
The other day I paused with my buttered toast soldier halfway into my soft boiled egg. Radio 4 was saying that eggs were bad for the heart because they contain cholesterol, around 186mg which is all in the yolk.
Health experts advise against eating more than 300mg of dietary cholesterol a day
Hmm, I thought as I dipped, really?
Most of us eat that kind of breakfast once a week at most, though.
In fact, after doing some after breakfast research I found that an average person of average health can eat up to seven eggs a week without increasing their risk of heart disease.
It seems in fact the main issue is not the egg per se, but how it’s cooked. Fried is obviously not as healthy as boiled, and if your fried egg is part of a breakfast involving sausages, bacon etc then that’s where the real problem is.
So enjoy your eggs, they really aren’t at all bad for you and a good egg is a thing of beauty. In fact a Tesco survey discovered that the most eaten meal over lockdown has been eggs,
You need good eggs though.
I stopped buying cheap eggs a long time ago. They are cheap for a reason and it’s not very nice.
We love their Burford Browns for their deep mahogany coloured shells and rich thick golden yolks, and also the Old Cotswold Legbar eggs with sunny pale blue shells whose colour reminds me of the Humbrol paint I used on the underside of my Airfix Spitfires as a kid.
Quail eggs are a decadent treat. Annoyingly hard to shell, but there is a knack to it, they’re perfect in a Salad Nicoise or simply dipped semi-hard into some spiced up salt as a canape. Thirty seconds is enough boiling for a soft yolk.
I like Clarence Court eggs, The hens are genuinely free range, whereas some egg producers stretch the definition, and they eat a mixed diet of wheat, maize, soya, sunflower, seashell, marigold, paprika and grass.
Clarence Court offer over twelve kinds of eggs, including hens, goose, quail, duck, guinea fowl, pheasant and even emu and ostrich.
I’m a recent convert to Duck eggs, and the Braddock Whites from Clarence Court are superb. Each egg weighs heavy in the hand and makes for a substantial meal with light creamy yolks. That lightness makes them good for baking, too.
And what about the Ostrich egg? I seriously thought it was a chocolate Easter egg given its packaging and size, but no.
These 2kg monsters are the equivalent of around 24 large hen’s eggs. They take 50 minutes to soft boil and the shell is so thick at 4mm, a hammer is needed to crack it.
Clarence Court Ostrich eggs come from free-range South African ostriches in Lincolnshire with only 2300 a year in the season.
You could fry one, but you’d need a pan the size of a dustbin lid. They have a very light texture so you could use them in baking a very big sponge, and they’re something of a seasonal treat as the laying window is April to September.
I was amazed at the range of quality eggs available from Clarence Court and Easter is surely the eggzact opportunity to try more eggs.
Okay, I lied about no more egg puns.
www.clarencecourt.co.uk and also available at www.waitrose.co.uk