BOOK ANGLESEY HOTELS


Anglesey Eggs, Anglesey

More British food legends

The Celtic Fringe has produced, doubtless of necessity, some classic recipes for potatoes. Elsewhere in this section we feature, for example, Boxty from Fermanagh, a way to make the best of leftover mashed spuds. Anglesey Eggs similarly would originally have been made when some mash from a previous meal was available, but like Boxty the dish is a triumph of invention, a pleasure to eat rather than a culinary dustbin.
Recipes for the dish vary widely now, as would be expected of a peasant plateful – in centuries past there would have been little reliance on written sources or the weighing scales. But the core of the thing is constant: boiled eggs served in a dish with mashed potato, leek, and a cheese sauce. An experienced or adventurous cook doesn’t need precise amounts, nor instructions about seasoning.
So: take mashed potato; add to them some leek sliced and cooked until soft; prepare some hardboiled eggs; make a flavoursome cheese sauce – Caerphilly or Cheddar would be good, but as with the potato element a dog-end or two of mousetrap may have served in times past. In a fairly shallow oven-proof dish, well-buttered, make a layer of the mash and plop the eggs, cut in half lengthwise and cut-side up into the spuds. Cover with the cheese sauce, and bake until hot throughout and brown on top. Serve at the table from the dish.
Refinements include making a crisper top with breadcrumbs (another user-upper) or crumbs and cheese; adding a grating of nutmeg to the cheese sauce; putting a herby touch like parsley into the mash; or going for a thicker cheese sauce and setting the eggs in that, with the potato arranged in a ring at the edge of the dish, which seems somehow tartily pointless.
Restaurants are likely to serve this as an accompaniment to meat, but it deserves to stand alone: Anglesey Eggs are filling; tasty, and cheering. With veggie cheese they are a good vegetarian option. And back to where we started on the Celtic spuds thing, I’ve eaten a related dish in Brittany.

Brit Quote:
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him - J R R Tolkien
More Quotes

On this day:
Battle of Berwick - 1296, Fire Claims 19 Glasgow Firefighters - 1960
More dates from British history

click here to view all the British counties

County Pages