Black Pudding Scotch Eggs

October, and the market had black pudding from the same stall that's been there since before I started going. A good one, dark and crumbly, with enough oatmeal and spice to smell like a proper kitchen. I brought it home with some sausage meat and half a dozen eggs and knew what the afternoon was going to look like.

A scotch egg is a generous thing. There's no delicate way to eat one, and that's part of the appeal. You pick it up, you bite through the crust into the meat, and then the egg gives way in the middle. When the black pudding is mixed through the sausage meat, the whole thing goes darker, richer, with that warm, iron-edged savouriness that pudding brings to anything it touches. It smells of the north.

This is picnic food, or cold-weather food eaten at the kitchen table with a jar of mustard and a few pickled onions. It travels well, wrapped in greaseproof paper in a bag. It tastes just as good cold the next day, maybe better, the flavours settled and firm. I wrote it down in the notebook: "Black pudding scotch eggs. October. Worth the mess."

A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. If your butcher's pudding is different from mine, if your eggs are a different size, adjust. Trust your hands. The wrapping is the only part that takes a bit of care, and even that gets easier after the second one.