Pheasant eggs with radishes and celery salt
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Serves: 4
Pheasant eggs are a bit of a treat rather like gulls eggs. Their season is quite short 6-8 weeks so make the most of them. You will need to make the celery salt the day before.
For the celery salt
A friend gave this recipe to me and it sounded like just what I was looking for - celery salt tinged green as you'd expect it to be. The brown powder we are used to is made with the seeds, and the idea of sprinkling pretty green home-made celery salt on to gulls' eggs, pheasant eggs or a Bloody Mary is really appealing. You can even give it away as a gift for Christmas as part of a little foodie hamper just put into nice bottle or clear bag. You will need one of those heads of celery that you find in a farmers market that hasn’t been trimmed to fit the bag. You can use the rest for a soup or salad.
Ingredients:
- 8 pheasant eggs
- 16-20 long breakfast radishes with their leaves, washed
- 3-4tbls good quality or home made mayonnaise
- The leaves from one large head of leafy celery
- 150-200g flaky rock salt like Cornish sea salt
Method
Trim the radishes leaving just the nice green leaves attached. To serve cut the eggs in half lengthways, leaving the shells on and arrange on individual plates or one large serving dish with the radishes, celery salt and mayonnaise.
For the celery salt
Set your oven to its lowest temperature. With some modern ovens you can just get away with using just the fan; the warming oven of an Aga is also ideal for this. Scatter the celery on to 1 or 2 baking trays and leave in the oven overnight until the pieces are dry and crisp, but don’t let them go brown. Depending on how watery the celery is you may have to allow even longer. Once dry enough, put them into a food processor with the sea salt flakes and blend to a coarse powder-like consistency or as course or fine as you whish. Store in airtight containers.