On Thursday mornings, we usually go into Hawick, where we pop into the Pickled Orange for a cuppa and a scone (just one between us, as they are very large!). Given the choice, we both prefer savoury to sweet scones ...... so this morning we were delighted to try out the latest offering - tomato and black pudding. It was delicious!
On the way out to the studio this afternoon, I was sidetracked, first by this clematis flower .......
....... then this very pretty aqualegia
In the evenings I have been stitching away on the little Christmas stitcheries. I have finished the first one .....
....... and have made a good start to the second one
I had another session quilting Lilly Pilly, and have now finished the centre area
When I did the food shopping on Tuesday, I got some lovely asparagus, which had been reduced to half price (because it has that day's date on it). I had a look through this book for a recipe .......
....... and settled on this one (although I don't know why she calls it Alpine eggs, as it uses Lancashire, not Swiss, cheese
I had started preparing the dish when it occurred to me to take photos! So at this stage, I had buttered the dishes, put the cooked asparagus in the bottom and added half of the cheese
The next stage was to add the eggs. I always used to break eggs one at a time into a ramekin, in case there was a bad one, but in recent years the standard of eggs has been so good that I had stopped doing that. But then some weeks ago, as I was cracking eggs to make scrambled eggs for Sunday breakfast, the last one was bad, so the whole lot had to be thrown out. So I have gone back to cracking them one at a time into the ramekin!
When I added the first two eggs to the righthand dish, the yolks promptly slithered to the side. I tried to gently persuade one to move back to the centre - and it promptly burst! However the two in the second dish stayed in the centre.
After seasoning with salt and pepper, the rest of the cheese was added and the top was dotted with butter ( just because it's a vegetarian dish, it doesn't mean that it's healthy!!)
As suggested by Delia, I served it with salad and crusty bread. I wouldn't normally butter the bread, but there was a little of the softened butter that I used on the oven dishes left, so I used it up! You will see that there is avocado on top of the salad - when we were shopping this morning, I got a pack of two "ripe and ready to eat" avocados which had been reduced to half price ..... because they had today's date on them! Topped with finely chopped chives (actually, I snipped them with scissors) the dish was delicious, and very filling. I think though, if I make it again, I will add ham for some extra flavour
I've got another silly thing to finish with ..... I wondered what Malcolm was laughing at as he unpacked a case of wine which was delivered this afternoon. I laughed too when he showed me this - if you don't speak French, the name of the wine is (almost) pronouned carry on