New Potatoes with Quails’ Eggs and Herby Cream Cheese Mayonnaise
Preparation info
Difficulty
Medium
Serves
4
Appears in
Almost Vegetarian Cookbook
Published 1999
Potatoes are one of my favourite ingredients and I quite often use them in a first course dish. The cream cheese mayonnaise is not a mayonnaise in the true sense of the word because it uses no eggs; the light creaminess combined with fresh basil, parsley, extra virgin olive oil and hazelnut oil is lovely. If quails’ eggs are not available, use small hens’ eggs.
Ingredients
500 g 1 lb 12 6 5 - A few leaves of flat leaf parsley, to garnish
For the mayonnaise
handful 14 125 g 4 oz 2 tablespoons 5 tablespoons 3 tablespoons - Salt
- Chilli powder
Method
Steam or boil the potatoes until they are cooked, then leave on one side. Lower the eggs gently into the boiling water, bring the water back to the boil again and boil for 2½–3 minutes (or 6 minutes for hens’ eggs). Drain and put the eggs in cold water to cool.
To make the mayonnaise, reserve a few perfect leaves of flat leaf parsley for garnishing later and chop the remaining parsley and basil leaves roughly. Put the full-fat soft cheese into a food processor with one tablespoon of the lemon juice and whizz together. Then add the olive and hazelnut oils, a very little of each at a time, whizzing well between each addition. Whizz in the remaining tablespoon of lemon juice, season to taste with salt and chilli powder and then whizz in the chopped parsley and basil. If you are not eating this dish immediately, refrigerate the mayonnaise until it is needed.
To serve
Shortly before eating, assemble the dish. Peel the eggs and slice both the eggs and potatoes in half lengthways. Arrange the potatoes and eggs together on individual serving plates and spoon some of the herby cream cheese mayonnaise to one side. Garnish the dish with the reserved whole parsley leaves.
© 1999 All rights reserved. Published by Websters International.