Scotch eggs with homemade pork sausage

Steam the eggs in a steamer basket for six minutes for soft-boiled eggs.

Chill the eggs in an ice bath until entirely cold.

Add fresh sage and fresh thyme to the ground pork, then the brown sugar, cayenne, ground fennel, a hint of nutmeg, salt and pepper; mix into a sausage.

Check the eggs: six minutes of steaming left them barely cooked, so steam them a second time.

variation: timing test. Put a dozen eggs in the steamer and from six minutes pull four at a time at one-minute intervals to compare six-, seven- and eight-minute eggs.

Peel the eggs. If peeling is hard, the membrane is still on: pull it back and run water underneath it.

Take about a quarter of the sausage, flatten it into a thin round, wrap it around a peeled egg and pinch it shut, using just enough sausage that it cooks through by the time the crumbs brown.

Bread each sausage-wrapped egg using one wet hand and one dry hand: flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, as a double breading.

Heat the oil to about 350F (it read 364). Lower in one Scotch egg at a time, spoon oil over the top and rotate it for even colour.

Lift the egg onto a paper towel to drain; normally rest about five minutes before slicing.

If the white is still runny when cut, fry longer at a lower heat to cook the white without setting the yolk.

variation: try frying around 325F instead of 350F so the white and the sausage cook through before the yolk sets; the oil dropped from 368 to 335 when the egg went in.

Fry the egg until the shell is dark brown, then rest it five minutes before cutting.

Fry the last egg longer than the others; it came out with a runny yolk, a set white and cooked sausage.