At his sophomore restaurant Lord’s, chef Ed Szymanski follows up his wildly popular New York City restaurant Dame with an homage to British bistro food. “I have pretty brutal childhood memories of takeaway Scotch eggs from an M&S before we go on a long train ride,” says Szymanski. “So we try and do a nice version here.”
A Scotch egg, at its core, is an egg wrapped “in a meat sausage of some sort, and then breadcrumbed and deep-fried,” says Szymanski. “They’re like the quintessential British snack.”
To make the restaurant’s curried lamb Scotch eggs, the eggs themselves first get cooked for precisely six minutes and 20 seconds. “Six minutes and 15 seconds is not long enough, and six minutes and 25 is too long,” says Szymanski. The eggs go straight into ice water to stop the cooking process.
The egg then gets wrapped in a lamb shoulder that’s ground in house, which gets mixed with a curry paste, made of ginger, garlic, shallots, and “a bunch of Madras-style spices.”
The goal is to ensure the lamb is evenly packed around the egg so it gets evenly cooked: Because the next steps are to breadcrumb and fry it, the lamb can’t be checked for doneness until the egg is cut open when served.
The eggs are plated with an herby creme fraiche sauce that adds acidity to the dish and brings out some of the spice. “This is like the revenge for all the bad Scotch eggs that I had growing up,” says Szymanski.
Watch the full video to see how Lord’s prepares its other dishes including its daily meat pies.
