Hellfire Beef and Watercress Trencher

A trencher is an old English name for a chunk of bread that was used as a plate in times long past, and was piled high with meat and veg.

In this trencher I started with a crusty griddled sourdough slice, a layer of griddled tomato and pepper slices, piled high with watercress, smothered in garlic mayo, before finally crowning with some spicy, tender griddled strips of Hellfire Piemontese Beef Fillet from Andrew Gordon Butcher in Aberdeen, this beef is super healthy very low in calories, rich in protein and very lean. Marinated in Hellfire sauce it had a wicked spicy kick, the strips were only cooked for a couple of minutes on a red hot griddle pan, so were tender and moist. A cold beer was perfect with it.

The first time I have tried this beef, and it’s certainly amazing stuff, healthy and tasty.

The Goose that laid the Giant Egg.

A Giant Goose Egg, A large Chicken Egg and a Quail Egg

I was given three lovely Goose Eggs, by my friends at Pitmans Farm to try after enquiring what they tasted like. Two of them were slightly bigger than a duck egg, but one was massive at least double the size of the others. I’m very fortunate to have some wonderful foodie friends who are proud of what they do, and also got lucky when dropping a little Smokin’ Fudge for Jan at Maddocks Farm to sample, she generously handed me a bag of her peppery organic watercress.

It popped into my head, as these things do, that they would be an ideal match, with the juicy pepperiness of the watercress offsetting the famed golden richness of the goose egg , and I was right, a simple salad of hard boiled goose egg (I wasn’t quite sure how long to boil for and so the yolk was a little harder than I had planned), with watercress and a sprinkle of sea salt, the egg was so large it was a meal all to itself.

I popped the egg into boiling water for 10 minutes as it was so huge, but 8 would probably have given a soft yolk.

They really are decadently rich, and have given me all sorts of ideas.

Giant Scotch Eggs anyone??