An overabundance of eggs!

We are being swamped with eggs!
Yesterday I made mayonnaise and meringues. I used up 6 eggs. Six eggs out of about a million didn't make much difference!

The mayonnaise was a very simple recipe.

Five egg yolks.
2 teaspoons of dijon mustard 
and a splash of white balsamic vinegar.
Olive oil and/or canola oil

Whisk the yolks, mustard and vinegar together, then slowly add a wee bit of olive oil, whisking all the time. Keep adding small amounts until it begins to get thick. Then you can be a bit more liberal with the adding! Basically keep adding and tasting until it tastes as you like it. Season. ( I actually use a mix of olive oil and canola oil)

Next the meringues, to use up the egg whites. 

I have a fail safe recipe.
5 egg whites
250g sugar
oven up to 180.

Put egg whites in a bowl and whisk until soft peaks. Add the sugar in 3 batches making sure each lot is well whisked in before adding more. It should be glossy with fairly stiff peaks.

Put baking paper on a tray and place the meringue mixture any way you want. Sometimes I do one large meringue and make a sort of pav. This time I got out 2 trays and made 8 individual meringues.

Put into oven and immediately turn down to 140. Cook for 1 hour checking to make sure meringues aren't getting too much colour - if they are turn down the heat a bit. After an hour turn off oven, but leave meringues in until completely cooled. I can guarantee that this will work every time!

 

 In hind sight these were far too big. They are on a large dinner plate! However Lloyd and I managed to eat 2 each. I thought I was going to be sick!!

Today we decided to pickle the rest.

So we boiled up 30 eggs and peeled them, and let me tell you, it's not easy to peel 30 incredibly fresh, hard boiled eggs.  Some of them are rather less pretty than others!

Lloyd made up a huge pickling brine which had a lot of ingredients in it.  White wine vinegar, cider vinegar, (about 2 litres in total)  golden syrup, honey, brown sugar, pickling spice, toasted black mustard seeds, fennel seeds, star anise, ginger, red and green peppercorns, one small onion finely chopped, lemon zest, the juice of a lemon and half a t-spoon of salt. Bring to the boil, simmer for 10 minutes and allow to cool.
He did it by feel, but I have to say it smelt absolutely lovely. It's a sweetish pickling brine.

Once it's cool put the eggs in jars (with room to move around a wee bit), cover with the brine and voila! In 2 weeks time, lovely pickled eggs.
 ( as an aside there was FAR too much brine, so we've bottled it and will use it for the next batch.)

Thirty hard boiled eggs, not the prettiest thing in the word!!

 

And here they are, in all their glory. I think a smaller jar of these, would actually make a rather nice pressie!