Scotch eggs – that good old British standard.

Actually, you might be surprised to hear that scotch eggs are well known in Japan too, as a regular at western-style food restaurants – what we call “yoshokuya”.

Yoshokuya restaurants have been popular in Japan since long before western food became mainstream here. Scotch eggs, omelettes, omuraisu (maybe you don’t know omuraisu? It’s stir-fried rice (raisu) covered in a fluffy omelette – I’ll tell you how to make it another time!) curry and rice, spaghetti, potato croquettes – all of these are Japanese variations on western foods that started at yoshokuya and have now become much-loved regulars in every Japanese home. When I was little I used to love the consomme soup at our local yoshokuya…

But I digress – let’s get back to scotch eggs. I like mine with the yolks still a little bit soft, boiled for precisely 7 and a half minutes. And I add tofu to the meat coating, too, to keep the calories down.

If you can get it, I recommend using okara (it’s also sometimes called unohana) which is a by-product in the tofu-making process, full of fibre and delicious. If you have raw okara, fry it without oil quickly first to reduce the water content. Then soften it with a little bit of soy milk and mix in with your meat.

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Ingredients

• 6 boiled eggs
• 1/2 an onion
• *360g minced pork (or sausage meat)
• *100 g momen (cotton) tofu
• *1 beaten egg
• *1 pinch of salt
• *pepper
• *nutmeg
• *3 tablespoons worcester sauce
• flour
• beaten egg
• breadcrumbs
• salad oil

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1. Put the eggs with a little salt in boiling water and boil for 7.5 minutes. Remove immediately, cool in ice water, remove the shells and then leave to cool.

2. Wrap the tofu in kitchen paper and heat in a 600w microwave for 3 minutes. Then place a plate or something similar on top of the tofu and leave for a hour or so to squeeze out the water.

3. We want the umami in the onions as well as their crunchiness, so finely chop your onion then fry just half slowly in salad oil till it is golden brown, leaving the rest raw.

4. Add the raw and fried onions to the ingredients above marked with an asterisk and knead with your hands until the mixture is firm and sticky. Then leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour or so.

5. To make sure the meat sticks to the eggs, wipe them dry and then coat them with a little bit of flour.

6. Divide the sausage mix in to 6 equal amounts and wrap around each of the boiled eggs.

7. Dip each one into flour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs in that order, then deep fry in medium hot oil for 3 or 4 minutes. If you don’t have enough oil to cover the eggs completely, use a ladle to spoon the oil over the eggs, and fry them for a little bit longer.