Pink Pickled Eggs

The life of a child is generally filled with wonderment. Where children may lack the concrete answers, they do not lack imagination. This is of course before an adult's reason and experience kicks in and give one of those terribly sensible explanation for things. And sometimes if we allow it, we regress back into those years.

Just yesterday there was a pair of hot pink fluffy slippers left outside our garage door in the apartment block where we live. They were well worn and shaggy tipped and in danger of being rained on by the full to bursting clouds. As we walked out to go shopping, we looked at them and laughed. It was as if the person had just disappeared into thin air.

"I know where they went. It was a ghost that walked into our garage door but wasn't able to take its hot pink slippers with them!" I blurted out. I became quite fascinated by these hot pink slippers and trying to figure out why they were there. And when we returned from our meal they were gone - pouf! The mystery of the hot pink slippers...

Pink is one of my favourite colours and one day I saw these pink pickled eggs on Instagram (or was it Pinterest)? I was in a rush and about to get on a plane but like the slippers, they caught my eye and I knew that I wanted to make them.

There are no artificial dyes used in these gorgeous eggs. In fact this is a bonus recipe where you use a whole beetroot and then get pickled beetroot to use in a salad or sandwich afterwards. It is incredibly easy and the eggs once pickled can last for a month in this gorgeous deep hued fuchsia pickling solution. I loved how they brightened up every salad that I ate. The ones with the deep lines were the first batch of eggs where the eggs were submerged into a hot pickling solution and the ones with the slightly fuzzy outline were from the second batch where the boiled eggs were submerged into the cold solution.

So tell me Dear Reader, what colour do you wear the most? Are there colours that you won't wear at all?

Pink Pickled Eggs

An Original Recipe by Not Quite Nigella

Preparation time: 10 minutes (including boiling the eggs)

Cooking time: 10 minutes

• 12 hard boiled eggs, peeled
• 1 large beetroot, peeled and chopped or grated
• 1 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon black peppercorn
• 1 teaspoon celery salt
• 1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
• 1 dried chilli

Step 1 - Simmer the beetroot, red wine vinegar, sugar, peppercorns, celery salt, mustard seeds and chilli in a saucepan until the beetroot is soft. Cool slightly.

Step 2 - Place eggs in sterilised jars giving them a little room to move around (so that the pink beetroot colour can coat them). Ladle over the beetroot mixture over the eggs and move the eggs around once or twice. The colour will set quite quickly. If you use sterilised jars and equipment, the eggs can keep for a month.