This is more of a critique than a recipe. 'Anglesey eggs' is a traditional Welsh dish using basic, frugal ingredients. Its comfort food. If you search you will find many recipes, all of which vary in terms of the quantities of ingredients. Basically, its an oven baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with leeks (so a sort of colcannon), topped with hard-boiled eggs, covered in a Mornay sauce (cheese sauce) and topped with breadcrumbs.
The problem is, that if you cover mashed potatoes with cheese sauce you end up with a sloppy or, at best, mushy concoction as they tend to merge together. Most recipes add butter, even cream, to the mashed potatoes which increases the sloppy consistency. The eggs are also fairly soft in texture. The toasted breadcrumbs provide a welcome crunch.
Having attempted this dish before, this time I added a layer of cooked leeks on top of the mashed potato to act as a barrier. It worked somewhat, but I still ended up with something that seemed too sloppy. My conclusion is that something got lost in translation over the years. A better approach would be to layer par-cooked sliced potatoes with leeks and then add the cheese sauce.
Traditionally this dish uses Caerphilly cheese, which is a mild, lactic cheese.
Ingredients
Chopped leeks cooked in butter (or boiled and drained)
Mashed potato
Nutmeg
White pepper
Hard boiled eggs, halved
Mornay sauce (cheese sauce) made with a mild, lactic cheese
Fresh breadcrumbs
Method
The problem is, that if you cover mashed potatoes with cheese sauce you end up with a sloppy or, at best, mushy concoction as they tend to merge together. Most recipes add butter, even cream, to the mashed potatoes which increases the sloppy consistency. The eggs are also fairly soft in texture. The toasted breadcrumbs provide a welcome crunch.
Having attempted this dish before, this time I added a layer of cooked leeks on top of the mashed potato to act as a barrier. It worked somewhat, but I still ended up with something that seemed too sloppy. My conclusion is that something got lost in translation over the years. A better approach would be to layer par-cooked sliced potatoes with leeks and then add the cheese sauce.
Traditionally this dish uses Caerphilly cheese, which is a mild, lactic cheese.
Ingredients
Chopped leeks cooked in butter (or boiled and drained)
Mashed potato
Nutmeg
White pepper
Hard boiled eggs, halved
Mornay sauce (cheese sauce) made with a mild, lactic cheese
Fresh breadcrumbs
Method
- Heat oven to 180C.
- Mix cooked chopped leeks with mashed potato adding nutmeg and white pepper to taste (reserve some leeks).
- Place the mash/leek mix in the base of a baking dish. Add a layer of the remaining leeks and nestle the hard boiled eggs in the leeks.
- Cover in Mornay sauce and top with breadcrumbs.
- Bake for 30 minutes until the top is golden.
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