Foody thoughts

It was with relief we got back to a big shop at the supermarket yesterday. It was a relief partly because it was sign of life getting back to normal, partly because it meant we had something other than minced beef in all its various forms to eat.

Today we’re going back to old fashioned tastes.  The Fox has decided to have a go at “Kipper & Egg Filled Jacket Potatoes”.

This takes me back years. This is a recipe that dates back to our early married years. At the time we lived at Crag Foot on the edge of Leighton Moss Bird Sanctuary. In many ways it was an idyllic spot. Crag Foot consists of no more than about a dozen houses nestled at the foot of Warton Crag. The scar from the quarrying on Warton Crag can be seen from miles away & is very distinctive. Here we rented a cottage for the first 18 months of our married life.

This recipe comes from a cookery book we’d bought on our honeymoon. Along with our world famous Kipper & Egg Kedgeree is found this recipe for filling jacket potatoes with a not dissimilar mix of (tinned) kippers, boiled eggs & a bit of mustard. Some cheese goes on top when the filled potatoes go into the oven to warm up the fish.

The other half of the tin of kippers I’m going to use tomorrow for the other intervening recipe. This is for Aberdeen Eggs. They are rather like Scotch Eggs, only instead of sausagemeat to enclose the boiled eggs, there is a very thick white sauce with the broken kippers mixed in.

My present dilemma is deciding what wine to have with today’s meal. To me, kippers suggests a good white sauvignon blanc, possibly even a New Zealand one with all its gooseberriness. However, the baked beans which will accompany the potatoes suggest a red wine, possibly something Spanish, Italian or even a Côte du Rhone. I shall have to think about this. At the moment I’m inclined to the idea of a white wine. In the days when we were at Crag Foot & had this meal regularly, we didin’t have the money to have wine with a meal. It wasn’t until some twenty odd years later we really discovered the joy of wine on a more regular basis.