quails egg scotch eggs

Had a dinner party recently, the main attraction of which was the starter, which was quails egg scotch eggs served with a salad of chestnuts and pancetta with rocket. Went down very well. Making the scotch eggs was very easy, if a bit fiddly. They take about two minutes to boil, but are very tricky to peel, because the shells are so thin they turn to a sort of powder, or sand. Quite nice to soft boil them as well, and have them runny. Anyway, just coat them in sausage meat and roll in breadcrumbs. I added sesame seeds to breadcrumb mix. One problem was the coating of sausagemeat opened and exposed the egg during deep frying. This may have been because I didn't coat the eggs in flour before applying meat, or it may be because of no beaten egg being added during the coating process. Will try applying these steps next time, but it didn't really matter, they were still lovely. Main course was individual chicken and tarragon pies with roasted veg. Ramekin dishes are big enough for these, just cut up some chicken and fry them with shallots, add stock, tarragon vinegar, creme fraiche and cornflour to thicken, put into pots and seal with puff pastry, then into the oven for about half an hour. Imagine you can do all the usual variations (mushrooms, bacon etc). The thing is they are very easy but look ultra-impressive. Dessert was wine jelly and cream and/or trifle. The wine jelly was my one serious failure, it just collapsed when out of the mould and looked like a plate of raw liver. Still tasted good. The trifle was madeira cake, raspberries, little bit of sherry, custard and cream and chocolate flake on tope. Simple but perfect, though I probably put in too much cake.