Sluttishly Savoury: Toulouse Scotch Eggs

Did you know it's National Sausage Week this week? No? Well until yesterday neither did I but I'm so glad I do because it's given me an excuse to make scotch eggs (not that I have ever needed an excuse to make these balls of meaty awesome).

Toulouse sausages are packed full of some of my favourite things: red wine (booze in sausages? Hell yes), bacon, garlic, herbs and it turns out they make cracking scotch eggs too. You can just buy Toulouse sausages but I prefer to make it from scratch so I can tweak it to my taste (add more booze and garlic).

You'll need: (makes 4)

• 250g pork mince
• 1 lean rasher of smoked back bacon, finely chopped 
• 100ml red wine
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 2 teaspoons dried garlic granules
• handful chopped fresh parsley
• pinch grated nutmeg
• big pinch black pepper
• pinch salt
• 6 eggs
• plain flour to coat
• about 150g breadcrumbs (Japanese panko breadcrumbs are particularly excellent if you can find them in the supermarket)

Make it!

1. First boil you eggs. Put 4 of your eggs into a saucepan of cold water and heat. Once the water is boiling set a timer for 6 minutes then plunge them into cold water. Leave to cool then peel.
2. Combine the mince, bacon, wine, herbs, nutmeg, salt and pepper in a bowl and mix really well. I like to fry a little bit of the mixture to check for seasoning and add more until I'm happy.
3. Beat the remaining 2 eggs in a bowl. Pour some flour into another bowl and put your breadcrumbs into a third.
4. Take a boiled egg and roll it in the flour then take a handful of meat mix and flatten it out in the palm of your hand. Put the egg in the centre and wrap the meat mix around until the egg is completely covered and make it all smooth and ball shaped.
5. Roll in flour, then beaten egg then breadcrumbs then back in the egg and finally again in the breadcrumbs. Once all your eggs are done fry them in a deep fat fryer set to 180C for 8  minutes. If you don't have a fryer then use a small saucepan (heat the oil and when you can drop a bit of bread in and it gently fizzes away and starts to brown then your oil is hot enough and fry one at a time making sure that the egg is completely covered by oil).