Scotch eggs made with quail eggs!

For the Husbands birthday, he requested a few "delicacies" from the Motherland. I got left with the task of delegating the outsourcing of these bits and pieces to the various friend and relatives with the skills to cook or procure these exotic dishes. Somehow, I ended up with the scotch eggs. Now, although we have slightly more than the council approved number of chickens and certainly no shortage of eggs, I thought that for a nibble platter, even half a scotch egg would be a fairly big morsel - and then I found some quail eggs at the markets and thought; "Now, that would defiantly be the way to go!"

Here's what I did...

I admired them for a long time - I think they are sooooo pretty with all their colours and different markings. So different from plain chicken eggs!

And so small!

I knew that the cooking times would be very different from the usual chookie egg and I found this great blog where all the hard work has been done and she has done the experiments to get the perfect cooking times for  quail eggs! I chose a slightly underdone time so that once the eggs were cooked again in the meat, they wouldn't be overcooked.

Cooked and uncooked quail eggs. Fiddly to peel - don't do this under time pressure but oh so worth it for these cute perfect little eggs!

And to my delight and amazement, the insides of the shells are blue!

Once wrapped in the sausage meat and rolled in breadcrumbs ad baked, they made the right size scotch egg for what I was after, just a taste not a meal - Quail eggs might also make a good size scotch egg for the kids lunch box if you wanted to!

I was so sure I had a picture of the finished scotch eggs as I was so pleased with them but I can't find them anywhere... Sorry! But take my word for it that they are really cute and will be a real talking point at any gathering! I am now wondering what my council regulation are with regards to quail flocks and how many eggs you would get out of such a tiny creature on a weekly basis... *googles quails in Australia*

Score card:
Green-ness: Hmmm... 4/5 for supporting a local grower?
Frugal-ness: 3/5 - no where near as cheap as organic chook eggs that have had classical music played to them and kept in a handmade organic hemp basket...
Time cost: Much quicker to cook than chook eggs - don't turn your back on them or they'll be over done!
Skill level: Umm.. Boiling water and watching the clock skill level!
Fun -ness: So so so cute and really worth the effort to track some down to have a play with!