A clutch of eggs.

{Does fifteen eggs quantify as a clutch? Watercolour and pencil drawing, Louise Jennison. (Please click to enlarge)}

Lottie (Sprink) today joins us and together we four bring you a clutch of eggs.

Eggs have such a smooth shape, immediately easy to visualise in the mind’s eye be it a freshly laid egg, a speckled egg seen in a bird's nest, a diagram in a book on anatomy or one wrapped brightly in Easter foil or dyed red and placed centrally in a knot of bread. Eggs in many forms are what we bring you today, dear ones.

Thank you Lottie for playing along. We’re happy you could join us.

And now to officially begin. Here is Lottie's response.

Egg London
It might be natural to think that in the urban centre of a city like London a clutch of eggs would be hard to find. Mais au contraire mes amis, if you look, you will see that clutches abound.



It seems like there are eggs everywhere at Borough Market where they arrive with feathers on and stand in regimented rows for saturday morning shoppers to cluck over as they fill their baskets with produce as local as London can muster.



And a little further afield, north of the River Thames on Exmouth Market, are clutches in other guises.  Moro, with its long zinc bar, wooden floor and unpretentious atmosphere, has eggs on the menu, disguised in a tortilla. This is hands down my favourite restaurant of all time and if you're ever in London a visit there will be long-remembered. Try the yoghurt and pistachio cake, you won't regret it.



A few doors down at Brindisa eggs are in abundance. The Almond and egg cake from Galicia sits temptingly on the counter, as does a platter of pasteis de nata alongside a copy of 1080 Recipes.



This book contains 52 egg recipes and the foreword of the egg chapter recommends removing eggs from the fridge at least an hour before they are needed as this ensures that "whites will whisk stiffly, mayonnaise will come out better and so on". It also states that "a newly-laid egg is indigestible - wait at least 24 hours before eating it".



Elsewhere, in town, Nigel Slater admitted recently in the Guardian that eggs are his bête noire, and as such they are scarce in his Kitchen Diaries, but, the generous man that he seems, he still offered up some seasonal egg recipes recently, pairing them with chervil, chives and parsley in an omelette and whisking burford brown yolks with oil to make mayonnaise.

My search for urban eggs took an unexpected turn when, whilst wandering around Clerkenwell, I heard a familiar but strangely out of place noise. Pausing to listen again and make sure I had really heard what I'd heard, I stood still and realised that yes, it was the crowing of a rooster. Following the noise lead me to a flash of tail feathers and I found this chap happily pecking around his owner's garden.



I like to think that not far away was his hen and her very own clutch of eggs.




{Sunday morning - poached or scrambled? Ink and pencil drawing, Elaine Haby.}


{Does twenty-four eggs quantify as a clutch? Watercolour and pencil drawing, Louise Jennison.}


{Does twenty-seven eggs quantify as a clutch? Watercolour and pencil drawing, Louise Jennison.}


{Looking but I can't for the life of me find my clutch of eggs, I. Collage, Gracia Haby.}


{Looking but I can't for the life of me find my clutch of eggs, II. Collage, Gracia Haby.}


{Looking but I can't for the life of me find my clutch of eggs, III. Collage, Gracia Haby.}


{Found! Collage, Gracia Haby.}