Brunch: œufs en cocotte with prosciutto and spinach

Regulars to this space know I detest eating Sunday Brunch out. That’s why I almost always cook on Sunday mornings. It’s comforting on so many levels. I typically find some jazz programming on cable and make the house smell yummy.

But with inclement weather on the way, I didn’t want to brave the throngs of panicked shoppers at the local market so I had to take what I had and make what I needed. This recipe is a derivative of one I saw in a magazine and wanted to amend based on what was in the fridge. The eggs are shirred, meaning baked. The whole thing is so simple anybody can do it; while the presentation is so amazing you’ll look like a genius.

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 4 ounces of thinly sliced prosciutto (most of one package)
• ½ yellow onion, diced
• 2 handfuls of spinach, coarsely chopped
• One small diced Roma tomato or 1/3 diced red pepper
• About a cup of a mozzarella cheese
• Parmesan cheese for garnish
• Salt and pepper to taste

Technique

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. Sauté the veggies until soft, about 5 minutes. Remove from the skillet and allow to cool. Next, grease a muffin tin (that’s right) with olive oil. Then, line the muffin tin with sliced of prosciutto and add your veggie mixture. Top with mozzarella cheese, making sure to leave a well in the center. Next, crack a fresh in the cup on the cheese. Garnish with a bit of parmesan, salt and pepper. Once that’s done, pop them into your oven for 12 to 18 minutes, depending on how runny you like the yolks. Serve atop a toasted English muffin.

Now, isn’t that better than waiting in line for the mediocrity that serves as Sunday brunch in most commercial establishments? Bon appétit!

The Joy of Comfort Food – Breakfast for Dinner

Her Imperial Majesty is a wellspring of great ideas. I don't know if she had any before she met me, but since we've been together, they've never stopped. Her latest involved a novel I wrote some 15 years ago but never published. Her genius idea from Saturday night was to post the thing in snippets on its own blog and see if we can't gin up some interest. After all, there's no point letting it sit in a box, unread and dusty.

The day after, Sunday, we went to a party at Alex's place in Greensboro and met up with two other writers, Liz and Shannon. Shannon had just acquired representation for a memoir she was working on. That set the water wheels in my head spinning. I haven't had representation since the 1990s; why not take the novel, spruce it up a bit, and send it out. Maybe the time is right.

Ah, things have changed in 15 years. Back then, the internet was new. Nobody other than geeks like me had an email address. Submissions were laborious affairs that consisted of sending stacks of paper from wherever I was to wherever the agents were, with a self-addressed stamped envelope. It was a maddening process.

Ah, close your eyes and drink in the brave new world that is the 21^st Century, with all its technical doodads that make everything go faster and faster. No longer is it necessary to transport the paper that holds the idea, simply transport the idea electronically. At the mere touch of a button, rivulets of information cascade through the cloud and land as if by magic on the right person's desktop. The 21^st Century is pretty cool when it works.

So, in order to spruce up the manuscript, I needed to create a synopsis, a short overview of what the story is, what the themes are and what the characters do. That's what I did on Wednesday. In a frenzied eight and a half hour marathon session, I cranked it out – all 3,800 words of it – a river of words and ideas that fried my brain, leaving me completely exhausted and in no mood to cook.

But right then, Her Imperial Majesty had another one of her great ideas: breakfast for dinner. It was to consist of hash browns with onions, bacon and cheese, simmered in a bit of chicken stock and seared off in a hot skillet. The eggs were to be poached by the Queen in her own fashion.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  
• Two left over baked potatoes, peeled
  
• One onion, coarsely chopped
  
• Two or three strips of leftover bacon
  
• ¼ cup chicken stock to deglaze
  
• Shredded cheese as a garnish
  
• Two eggs, poached
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  

Technique

• In a skillet, pour the olive oil. Once it's hot, add your potatoes and cook for about 5 minutes
  
• Add your onions and sauté for about 5 more minutes or until caramelized
  
• Deglaze your pan with the chicken stock and cook until it reduces, making sure it doesn't stick
  
• Remove the pan from the heat and add your cheese. Cover for a few minutes to let the cheese melt.
  
• Plate with your poached eggs
  

I'm not exactly sure why I so enjoy breakfast for dinner. Maybe it's a throwback to my waiter days when I would get off work at midnight and the only place open was fast food (er, no, I don't think so) or a 24 hour diner serving breakfast. Whatever it is that draws me back to breakfast for dinner, I'm glad it does. With the simplest of ingredients and barest of technique, it satisfies at so many levels. It's the perfect food to think about when I've had to think about too many things.