Quail Egg Nicoise Salad with Crispy Skinned Trout

I came across these beautiful quail eggs in the supermarket recently and just had to use them. I thought I would make an old favourite of mine, nicoise salad, and these tiny eggs proved to be the perfect size. I served the salad with a crispy skinned trout fillet, it was all round lovely. Handling the quail eggs made me feel as though some fairies had secretly delivered magical ingredients to my kitchen, they are just so pretty.

Ingredients:

2 Potatoes

2 handfuls of Green beans

10 Quail eggs

1 cup of olives (usually kalamata but I used a mix)

½ a bunch of Dill

1 Lime

Olive oil

A pinch of chilli flakes

A pinch of salt

Method:

Boil potatoes until they can be easily pierced then set them aside to cool.

The beans need to be blanched so and easy way to do this is but them in a bowl or saucepan, boil the kettle and pour the boiling water over them, let them sit in the boiling water fro about 30 seconds then drain them and rinse them under cold water.

Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil then gently lower your quail eggs in and cook them for 2 minutes. After 2 minutes rinse the eggs under cold water and peel them.

Finely chop the dill.

Get a large mixing bowl and start putting the salad together. Chop your potatoes into bite size squares and pop them into the bowl, throw in the dill, olives and green beans. Drizzle a generous slurp of olive oil over the salad, sprinkle a pinch of sea salt and chilli flakes over the lot. Give it all a gentle mix up.

Pile a mound of the salad onto each plate then cut your quail eggs in half and arrange them around the salad.

Now my trick to a crispy skinned salmon or trout fillet is to get your pan nice and hot, cover the fish in olive oil (don’t pour oil into the pan) and place the fish skin down into your hot pan. Cook the fillet until you can see about one centimetre of the fish has changed and is cooked then pop the whole pan (use a frypan with a metal handle) into a preheated oven at 180°C for about 5-6 minutes depending on how well cooked you like your fish. To get the fish off of the pan use a metal spatula.