The scotch egg pasty

There's a brilliant idea in the August Good Food mag - scotch egg pasties. Instead of deep frying the assembled scotch egg, you wrap it in pastry and bake it. I liked the idea so much that I nipped over to Stoke Newington farmers' market first thing to get some Muck and Magic sausagemeat. I spotted these fabulous sweet peppers and had a great chat to the lady from Stour Valley lavender farm - last December I bought some wonderful marrow chutney from her. I liked it so much that I returned to get another three jars as Christmas presents. She also sells lovely lavender and lemon marmalade. Another market purchase was some sweetly swollen purple goosegogs, and some beet from Sarah Green.
A quick stop at Fresh and Wild over the road (except it's not Fresh and Wild anymore) to stock up on cheese and olives, then back home to get cooking.

There's something oddly satisfying about de-skinning sausages...into a bowl they went, together with a handful of breadcrumbs and oregano, chives, parsley and sage from the garden. A good squish and that's it. The original recipe calls for shortcrust pastry, but I'd got a pack of the puff variety in the fridge. It also recommends medium eggs - but I think small would be better. Having hardboiled your eggs, it's assembly time.

The recipe suggests lining the pastry with the sausage mix, then putting your egg on top before folding the pastry up and over (a la Eddie Wearing) and crimping, but this was tricky with my larger eggs. So I tried another method.

Encasing the egg, as for scotch eggs, was a bit more successful. There was some pastry and sausage meat left over, so I made some mis-shappen sausage rolls. Then they all go into a hot oven (gas mark 7) for about half an hour.

Here are the sausage rolls...

...and here's the oddly shaped pasty. Tasted good though! I think these would be even better made with quail's eggs, except I'm sure someone told me that the quail's eggs in supermarkets come from caged birds, which is a horrible thought and out of the question as a purchase. I'll have to do some research on the matter. I'd also love to make them with Simon Rimmer's veggie alternative to the scotch egg - he replaces the meat encasement with a falafel type shell.