A deep-fried "treat", in honour of Marguerite

Mentioning the 1940s-themed bar Cahoots in my last post reminded me, sadly, of the passing a couple of months ago of the great doyenne of thrifty wartime cooking, Marguerite Patten, at the ripe old age of 99.

After a brief stint as an actress and then a demonstrator for the Frigidaire company, Marguerite came to public attention during World War II working for the Ministry of Food, suggesting recipes that made the most of rationed foods and broadcasting these and other tips and essential skills on the BBC radio programme Kitchen Front. After the war she started to appear on television cookery programmes, but remained adamant that she was not a celebrity chef, saying "To the day I die, I'll be a home economist" in a 2011 interview. She had a staggering 170 cookery books to her name, including the 1960 glossy bestseller Everyday Cookbook in Colour, which was hugely influential at a time when most cookery were printed in black and white without any pictures at all.



Coincidentally, only a matter of weeks before she passed away, I had purchased one of her less well-known books on eBay - 500 Recipes: Canned and Frozen Foods. Obviously I had bought it more on account of the subject matter rather than its author; I have no doubt there are far better examples of her work and writing among her many titles (she also wrote one, much later on, where every recipe contains SPAM in some form, which I really must track down too), but it seems fitting that I should try out some of the recipes now, in tribute to a lady who has contributed so much towards the diet and eating habits of the nation, particularly during the war when food was so scarce.

The recipes in the book are organised by variety of tinned (or frozen) product rather than by course or type of dish, which is quite useful (particularly for a cannoisseur like myself) as you can then find a selection of ideas in one place for whatever tin you might happen to have to hand, rather than having to search through the whole book. As it was published in 1963, some of the products are not ones you see in the shops any more, such as beetroot, turtle soup and kidneys, but there is still plenty for today's cooks to try.

Whoever previously owned the book left a scrap of paper in the salmon pages, suggesting perhaps they had tried, or planned to try, the Piquant Salmon, the Salmon Chowder, the Salmon Loaf, the Salmon Mould (not the most attractive name for a recipe), the Salmon Rice Souffle or the exotic-sounding Salmon Timbales. The recipes that really caught my eye however were the ones using that staple of wartime cookery - and my own childhood too - corned beef. Naturally there's a hash recipe (two, in fact), but also some more unusual suggestions, including Corned Beef Pate, "Savoury Balls", and even a Corned Beef Risotto, which I think is probably not anything like mama used to make. But it was when I saw the recipe for Corned Beef Scotch Eggs that I knew we had a winner.

Scotch eggs seem to have seen a bit of a revival of late, finally breaking away from the memory of cheaply-made supermarket versions where the eggs rattle about inside their sausagemeat shells. This was probably spearheaded by pubs offering well-made versions as upmarket beer snacks, but it is also becoming increasingly common to see them on restaurant menus, freshly fried to order with a runny yolk inside. The standard sausagemeat is now quite commonly replaced or mixed with the trendy ingredients of the day, like chorizo or black pudding. (There's even a restaurant in London that serves a burger sandwiched between two halves of a Scotch egg instead of a bun, which frankly just sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen.) As yet, I've never seen a corned beef version, but I don't think corned beef has really hit trendy ingredient level yet. But perhaps its time is still to come...

So - to work. Essentially the recipe involves making a white sauce (with margarine in Marguerite's recipe), to which breadcrumbs and a mashed-up tin of corned beef are added. This is then pressed around hard-boiled eggs, which are dipped in beaten egg and breadcrumbs, and then deep-fried. Marguerite suggests a large tin of corned beef for 6 eggs; I only had a small tin in my stash, so halved the other quantities accordingly, hoping that would work out alright. The tin itself was a little unusual in that it was Princes' Corned Beef with Onion, one of a new range the company recently launched with various extra ingredients added, the others being 'with Mustard' and 'with Chilli'. All of these are flavours which would go well with corned beef, of course, but I wasn't holding all that much hope that the onion version would be an improvement on the classic.

Removing the CB from its tin, there was indeed a whiff of onion, and a slight tang of it on the tongue too when tasting a little bit - but only in as much a way as you get with milk when you leave it in the fridge with a cut onion. Admittedly this is somewhat more agreeable than oniony milk, but it doesn't really make an exciting change to standard CB. Although the ingredients list includes both onion (5%) and onion powder, the former has obviously been well pureed; there are no chunks of onion to provide a bit of interesting texture. If you were being lazy while making a corned beef hash, I suppose you could opt for this, for a hint of onion flavour, but frankly you might as well spend a few extra minutes frying your own onions for it too. As for the mustard and chilli versions, I suspect you'd be better off adding these flavourings yourself too.

I decided to shake things up a bit with the other ingredients as well. It just so happened that a few weeks earlier, I had picked up a packet of Matzo Meal in Sainsburys for a bargainous 20p - presumably as Passover had well and truly, err, passed, and they had loads of them left...over. Thinking that the standard coating for a scotch egg was not unlike these very fine crumbs, I wondered if they might be put to good use here. I also had an open jar of pickled eggs to use up, which I had purchased on a similar whim (i.e. they were reduced too), but hadn't particularly enjoyed eating them on their own. As something vinegary is generally very welcome in a corned beef sandwich, I thought they might prove more successful here.

I was going by guess work to some extent with the quantities for the roux, so probably ended up with a bit more of it than really I needed. I think consequently  I should have added even more matzo meal than I did alongside the corned beef, as the mixture was probably a little gloopier than was ideal for forming a good firm shell around the eggs.So in fact I was able to roll them straight in the matzo meal, which clung to them very easily, but as I had already beaten the egg, I then dipped them in that and gave them a second layer of the crumbs.

 

Then came the exciting part. I had never deep-fried anything at home myself before, not so much for health reasons as that it always seemed a bit of a risky business. Perhaps it was having seen too many safety videos about chip-pan fires while growing up that I had always assumed it was inevitable the whole thing would burst into flames and burn the kitchen down. But I felt it was finally time to throw caution to the wind and give it a try. Nevertheless, for safety's sake, even before I even started heating the oil (in the deepest pan I have) I had a damp tea-towel ready to drape over a potential fire, knowing all too well from those videos what would happen if I poured water on it.


When it was hot enough to brown a small cube of bread, I very very gingerly lowered the eggs into the oil one by one, which starting bubbling furiously. Marguerite had said to fry them "until crisp and golden brown", but given no indication as to how long it would this would take, so I had to keep half-lifting them out of the oil with my slotted spatula to check their colour. It was fairly early on that I noticed that all of them seemed to have developed a crack along one side, exposing a little of the corned beef filling to the hot oil, which I hoped wouldn't end up burning.

After a few minutes of frying, I removed the eggs completely from the oil, draining them on kitchen paper and allowing them to cool a little. They were indeed crisp and golden, apart from the exposed corned beef crack, which had turned to a dark red colour, making them look a little like a cross between Pacman and The Joker, as portrayed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight.

"Why so serious?" "Because of all the ghosts chasing me!"

Cutting into one, I again wished I had added more of the matzo meal to the corned beef mixture, as the heat of the oil had softened it even further. Rather than a Scotch egg with a runny yolk, like the gastropubs aim for, I had ended up with one with a somewhat sloppy meat layer within the crisp shell.  Oh dear. As for the taste though, it wasn't bad at all. Having been mixed with the white sauce, that very distinctive corned beef flavour wasn't quite so pronounced here, giving a more mellow meatiness. The hint of onion was still just about noticeable, and not unpleasant either. The matzo meal had produced fried to a lovely crust, but the pickled eggs were perhaps not the best decision - even against the meat, they were a little too vinegary without providing much back themselves in terms of flavour. Take me to a fish and chip shop and I'd choose a wally over a pickled egg any day of the week. Still, using them got rid of the jar I'd had lingering around for ages.



I only ate two of the Scotch eggs straight from the fryer; after a day in the fridge, the shell of the remaining one had lost quite a lot of its lovely crispness, but the meaty layer had firmed up nicely around the egg, making it a bit more practical as a bar-type snack as it didn't then need a knife and fork to eat.


I'm not sure if I would necessarily try making these again, but doing so has prompted me to get over my fear of deep-frying, which I would definitely try another time, and I am sure that I will turn to this book for some (t)inspiration again soon. I suppose hundreds of thousands of home cooks over the years must likewise have learned and tried new techniques, skills and recipes from Marguerite's books too; we have much to be grateful to her for, which I hope she realised while she was still with us. But not being a celebrity chef, by her own asdmission, I am sure she would have been far too modest to agree.

Marguerite Patten, 1915 - 2015