Scrambled eggs from happy and fabulous hens

Clarence Court means serious business. They do whatever it takes to bring us eggcellent eggs. (Sorry, I couldn't resist!) Even if it means giving their hens space to run about, and happy. Space to run around, AND HAPPY? Who would even think of doing that for a mere chicken!

I shan't provide links to another one of those videos of caged chickens with legs so skinny from lack of use that they cannot support their own body weight. Because there's no need to do that to convince you that free range eggs are a worthy investment - even if not for your body, at least for your palate.

And Clarence Court makes it such a delight for your eyes too. The beautiful dusty blue coloured packaging only hints at the even more gorgeous pale blue eggs from Cotswold Legbar hens. It is difficult to imagine that these are naturally pale blue. Cotswold Legbar hens are not the only hens that lay blue eggs, it seems. In fact, blue isn't the only unusual colour - there's the deep brown of the Burford Brown hens, and the green/olive of the Araucana.

Ed and I have been eating only free range eggs for a while now, even before a switch flipped in our heads and we decided we needed to live more responsibly. (See 'About site' for more info.) So we were not surprised by the full, bright orange yolks of the Cotswold Legbar eggs and the silkiness that it lent to a simple pasta dish of just five ingredients. Okay, seven if you include salt and pepper.

Three of the five ingredients - red onion, garlic, and dried porcini mushrooms rehydrated with hot water.

But the real revelation really came from eating the duck eggs we bought, also from Clarence Court. They had shells of a beautiful shade of pale, off-white, so translucent I could almost see through it. I'd only ever eaten salted duck eggs with a porridge of rice, also known as congee. (The link to the salted duck eggs even gives a recipe for making them out of raw duck eggs, which I'm incredibly tempted to try soon.) I may also have had century eggs made out of duck eggs at some point. But I've never had duck eggs enjoyed as they are.

They felt immediately different from the get go. The egg yolks put up more resistance to being broken apart with a fork and had an almost sticky consistency. It seemed as if it was refusing to meld with the transparent egg white.

I scrambled it with some full cream milk and a pat of butter, and lightly seasoned with salt and a light scattering of flat leaf parsley, just as I normally do with chicken eggs. They tasted significantly richer, denser and creamier. What a luxurious mouthfeel. It makes sense since their yolks have a higher fat content than chicken egg yolks, and the eggs have a higher proportion of yolk to white ratio too. They are known to also produce fluffier cakes and pastries. While this doesn't mean we'll exclusively eat duck eggs, we're definitely incorporating more of them in our daily diet.

When I first did research on making scrambled eggs, I tried a crazy recipe that recommended a 1:1 ratio of eggs to cream in volume. Yes, you read that right. For every mouthfull of scrambled eggs, half of it was cream. Each subsequent time I made scrambled eggs, I would reduce the ratio to find the right balance for me, until I decided to switch the cream for milk instead. This yielded a still creamy but much lighter scrambled eggs, and I've stuck with this ratio ever since. But I've always felt that taste is such a subjective thing - you should find your own magic ratio too.

HERBED SCRAMBLED EGGS

Ingredients

2 free range duck eggs

100ml full cream milk

10g butter (or enough to coat your frying pan)

Flat leaf parsley

Salt

Method

Beat the eggs well. Add milk and a pinch of salt, and beat again until well incorporated.

Melt butter in a non-stick frying pan over low-medium heat, tilting your pan so the butter coats the pan.

Pour egg mixture into pan. (The egg should not sizzle in the pan. If it does, remove pan from heat and lower the heat before returning the pan to the heat.)

Using a silicon spatula with a flat edge, scrape the bottom of the pan continuously to pull away the layer of egg in contact with the pan which should have cooked. After a while, most of the egg mixture should have cooked and the top may still be slightly runny and glossy.

Remove from heat and serve immediately with a light scatter of flat leaf parsley and salt to taste. The heat will continue to cook the rest of the egg.

#FoodBreakfast #FoodRecipe #Ethicallivingeggs