There is something satisfying in using the whole of an egg. For the late lunch today I thought I would cook fish and chips. Inevitably on the list of things to pick up on the way back from work appeared Tartare Sauce. That was fine, Wards always have a jar available.

But then I noticed that pudding for the evening was a Pavlova. That would end up with another bowl of egg yolks going crusty in the back of the fridge.

“Don’t they make Tartare Sauce with mayonnaise”, I asked. Before there was an answer I remembered Roger cooking breaded plaice in Ireland and him spending time in the kitchen fining down bread crumbs and finely chopping gherkins and capers. I pulled down from the shelf the book on Sea Food cooking by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and was pleased to find that it open up at the same page that Roger must have cooked from five years ago.

Roger went off to buy the plaice and other ingredients whilst I spent an hour or so chipping off limpets from the the the rocks down by the sea to make a limpet stew, a recipe I had spotted in the same book. I should have anticipated the reception the stew would get from the half hearted praise it was given in the book  the limpets are chewy, but pleasant nonetheless, and the stew liquor is fantastic.

With the benefit of hindsight I suspect that he underplayed the chewiness of the limpets but the rest he got right. I enjoyed the stew.

i am not sure that the Tartare Sauce I made was as good as Roger’s. But it was satisfying chopping up the gherkins and capers and then finely chopping the hard boiled eggs. I suspect that we don’t really know what a Tartare Sauce should taste like having been innurred over so many years to the plastic packets that sit by our plates of scampi.

Listening to Giant Sand but gearing up for some Kate Bush later and a reappraisal of Snow.