Not the cocktail sort. It's been about a week since I last made a cocktail.
We've been meaning to make pickled eggs for a while now. Trouble is that fresh eggs don't make good hard boiled eggs, the whites don't solidify properly. We haven't had enough older eggs to make it worthwhile.
DH bought a dozen eggs home from the allotment yesterday. Some of them were a week old, and I had a few on my Egg Skelter which were as old or older. In the end I managed to get together 11 eggs to try.
I have two recipes. One is for pickling quails eggs and, whilst it tells me I need 48 Qualis eggs and 700ml white wine or cider vinegar, it doesn't tell me what sized jars to use. The other is for pickling hens eggs, and tells me how much vinegar I need per 6 eggs.
So, I estimate that I can fit 6 eggs into a 500ml Le Parfait jar. I could probably fit in more, but I want to allow room to cover and room around. I decided to make two lots of pickling vinegar, with the same additives in both but one with a base of white wine vinegar and one with a base of cider vinegar. That way we can decide what vinegar we prefer, and then we can experiment with the additives in future batches. Of course I didn't have quite the right amount of vinegar, so I've had to adapt the recipe. I've made notes though and, if it's a success, I'll post it.
So. The vinegar mixes have been boiled and are cooling and steeping. The eggs have been hard boiled, plunged into cold water immediately, then cooled rapidly in running water and the shells cracked - this is to prevent that horrible black ring appearing around the yolk.
And now I'm waiting for the vinegar to steep and cool so I can pot up. And then I have to wait 6 weeks.
The house smells of vinegar.
