Baked eggs
Miss South is doing some visiting for the next few days and rather than leave her housesitter* with a miserable looking selection of vegetable ends and a half empty egg box in the fridge, I decided to use up the various bits and bobs therein and make baked eggs and kale for dinner the night before departure.
The iron rich goodness of kale accompanies eggs just as well as spinach does in the classic eggs Florentine and this dish is like a more hearty, less tricky version of that classic. A bit of Googling to get the timings and temperature right on the eggs led me to this Jamie Oliver recipe with smoked fish and cream which would succesfully fill an egg and spinach shaped hole in your life if you can’t be bothered to make hollandaise. Being incredibly lazy after a day’s packing and cleaning, I opted to completely omit the creamy portion of the dish completely and stick to the basics of kale, eggs and anchovies to make a simple supper.
I sweated the kale down slightly with some butter and two or three chopped anchovy fillets until it was slightly softened, then added some tomatoes from the garden that needed using up to soften them a bit too. I then cracked the three remaining Burford Brown eggs from the fridge into the pan and popped the open pan into the oven at 180° for about 10 minutes…
I got slightly sidetracked for about an extra four minutes thanks to some high drama on Coronation Street, but when I got to the oven, the contents of the pan looked perfectly happy. The kale underneath the eggs was soft and tender, the tomatoes were just cooked enough to have the juice bursting out, but not enough to collapse. The kale on top was slightly crispy more like the wonder that are kale chips and the eggs were neatly swaddled by these lovely leaves, looking just perfectly set.
I scooped the whole panful out onto a plate, seasoned it well with pepper, but skipped the salt due to the anchovies and tucked in. It was delicious, light crispy kale tinged with salty savoury umami anchovies and soft creamy eggs merging together in sheer loveliness. The eggs were slightly less runny than I would have liked, but it was my own fault that they ended up a tad overdone. I’ll stick to no more than ten minutes in the oven in future.
Even with the slightly overdone eggs, this was a fantastic dinner. Quick, easy, cheap and only one pan of washing up to boot! It would be terrific with a bit of chorizo thrown in or some sausages or the smoked fish in the above recipe. In fact, it is just a fantastically adaptable recipe for any evening when you can’t quite be bothered to cook, but there’s a rather long queue in Sainsbury’s to buy a ready meal…
*the housesitter got left with two bottles of wine instead!
This dish combines most of my favourite food items, it’s close to perfection. I had amazing baked eggs at a Russian cafe in Melbourne, but have never had the cojones to make my own. Must give it a shot.
This post also reminded me of Nigel Slater on the joys of slowing emptying the pantry/fridge before a trip.
That looks yummy, and can thoroughly recommend you give Shakshuka a try, am sure you can substitute the peppers!
Carolyne, thanks for the heads up on shakshuka. It sounds like my idea of hell. I hate cumin and tumeric and of course peppers…
Eeek, no cumin either, I’m really sorry for suggesting this.
At a risk of getting it wrong even more, I make a wonderful version of baked beans with butter beans, tomatoes, onion, garlic and chili and always poach a couple of eggs in it when I reheat the leftovers. It’s very very good and hope that if you like all the ingredients, then hopefully one day you’ll give it a try!
Now that sounds amazing! I could definitely go for that…especially a morning after the night before when the chili will perk me up!