Never take Scotch Eggs to a Catalan picnic....

Scotch Eggs are, for me, the perfect picnic food; they sit alongside sausage rolls, flasks of tea, ham sandwiches and pork pies as ideal for a picnic, no matter the weather. The picnic is an English tradition that has been exported all around the world in various guises and adopted by various cultures so I was delighted to be invited along to a picnic in Hyde Park recently.

April 14th was the warmest day of 2013 so far and it seems everyone was heading to the park or the beach (though 18c doesn't feel like beach weather to me). I was invited to a picnic in Hyde Park with a Catalan friend and 6 of his London based Catalan friends, in all the group was made up of 7 Catalans, 2 Englishmen and 1 French girl. It was a marvellous day, the sun shone and the rain vanished for a few hours. We all had brought something along to share. I bought Scotch Eggs (which, for the un-initiated are: a

hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried) and some other traditional picnic/snack food (a Cornish Pasty and a Cheese & Ham sandwich).

The picnic with my Scotch Eggs untouched in the centre

They are a picnic essential. I offered them around a few times and noticed as everything else was eaten and all the beer was drunk, the Scotch Eggs sat there, lonely and unloved. Only 2 were eaten out of the 12 I had bought and those 2 were eaten by me. I faked offense at the snub and was told by the Catalan girls that my eggs were like plastic, they were perhaps fake and that if I was in Barcelona, I would forget that Scotch Eggs ever existed. Somehow, I don't think so.

Sean Usher
April 16, 2013