Our One Fight

So, my iCloud is full. It's full for a lot of reasons, the most obvious being that Apple only allows 5GB of free storage and I refuse to pay for the privilege of storing a few extra cat videos. But it's also full because I have a stockpile of food adventure photos (sorry, the yarns are taking a mental health break) that I had meant to incorporate into this blog but never got around to. And the most striking of those have got to be the ostrich egg. Also known as the Scotch Ostrich Egg Fiasco. Also known as Our One Fight.

A little setup, of course. The ostrich egg was the result of 1-year-anniversary celebrations with Mad Scientist Boyfriend (now Mad Scientist Fiance, but that isn't part of the story). On a trip to the ostrich farm somewhere around the Santa Barbara area, we were tempted by the siren song of one very large, heavily armored encasement of albumin and cholesterol. Now, the obvious thing one does with an ostrich egg is, as we were informed, to drill some holes in the thick shell, siphon out the contents, and make a gigantic omelette or scramble. But why do the obvious? Somewhere along the drive back to Pasadena with a stop for brats and beer and ice cream in the middle, we, um, hatched the wonderful awful idea of Scotch eggs.

Now, a bit of background. I am an instinctive cook. What are our liabilities and assets? Great. Find out mid-recipe you don't have the right pan or a key ingredient? Improvise. One thing I never ever do is give up, because wasting food is bad, m'kay? Meanwhile, Mad Scientist Fiance is exactly what happens when you allow a mad scientist to take over a kitchen. All sorts of wild and wacky flavor profiles and ingredient combos? Check. But scientists are not invested in a single result, or else they're bad scientists. You see where this is going.

It was a busy week, and between anniversary trip, heat wave (I still maintain that temperatures above body temp are unnatural, dry heat or not), a busted AC, and planning for Camp Fangamer followed almost immediately by cross-country move, neither one of us was what you would call well-rested. Still, if we were going to do Scotch ostrich egg, we might as well go all out. Lacking a fryer that big, we settled on more of a Wellington method: wrap the boiled egg in sausage and a puff pastry and bake until golden. But, um, how exactly does one boil an ostrich egg?

If you said pop it in a large pot of water and just let it go for a couple of hours, you'd be partially right. We did...only to make a burr hole through which raw albumin percolated in a never-ending stream. So, back in the pot it went. By then it was about 1 AM, so we boiled the damn thing basically overnight and agreed to deal with it in the morning.

So, next morning and time to peel the monstrosity. It...kind of went okay?

Until I realized the sausage I had cooked the night before was simply too stiff to wrap around the still-jellylike egg white and the whole thing sort of broke apart the pastry wrapping.

So, now what? Put it away and think about the learning experience, says Mad Scientist Fiance! No, never, say I! Scotch egg or bust! It's never going to work, says he. Let's cut our losses and plan for the next egg. That's 40 bucks plus extra ingredients down the drain, I protest. Then you're doing it alone, 'cause I'm going to work, says he.

Over the next several hours, I proceed to tinker my own way. Sausage goes back in the pan with whatever dairy product we have on hand (I think it was milk?) and some of the crumbled and very slimy egg white. Remaining egg gets to stew in the fridge. Turns out the albumin makes a decent binder and the milk a good emulsifier, and before too long I have a fairly respectable, if oddly rich even for sausage gravy, sausage gravy. Lovely. Out comes the puff pastry, then a layer of sausage gravy, then a layer of more crumbled albumin bits, then the yolk, which is enormous and probably overcooked and by now has decided it needs no covering save a thin sulfurous patina or so.

Wrapping the monstrosity is...not easy, but eventually it settles into something of a proteinaceous football, which ends up back in the fridge for added stability.

It doesn't look all that much more stable after the fridging, but whatever. Arranges on baking tray and slices top "decoratively." Gordon Ramsay would be horrified. Then a layer of egg wash (because that's what this thing needs is more egg of the chicken variety to sacrifice to the ostrich gods), and in the oven it goes.

All in all the baking takes...30 minutes to an hour?

If you've never had Ostrich Egg Wellington, well, I don't recommend it. The egg is the sort of rich, gamy, unctuous horror that is very much better served whisked with a collection of herbs and veggies in a very large saute pan. But I promised a Wellington, damn it. Also, won't you admire my sausage gravy?

Screw it. Won't you admire my buttermilk biscuits, which made for much better Camp Fangamer road trip fare the next day. I needed something to sop up the excess gravy.

Well, it wasn't much of a fight. Because, really, there are no winners when Ostrich Egg Wellington is involved.