CarmEmily » breakfast

Eggs en Cocotte…sort of

Emilily — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:40:42 +0000

So I was inspired by your egg cook-off, and hungry, and working from home today, so I decided to try my own eggs en cocotte! I used cippolini onions, bell peppers and oregano, and gruyere cheese for the top. Since my toaster oven has a broiler setting, I browned the cheese, but I should have cleaned off the edges of my dish because it looks a little messy. Also, sadly, I broke my yolks. I almost challenged my fear of runny eggs by leaving them whole, but then realized I did not have any bread to soak up the liquid chicken juice, so I went ahead and cooked them firm. I think next time I will be more adventurous with the yolks, but overall, yummy!

failing better…

Carmen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:23:21 +0000

Little did I know, there was an Eggs en Cocotte cook off happening at my house this weekend. As you know, I made it on Saturday and then Max made it today. I have to say there were good and bad things about each one. Max made his with red onion and tomatoes. I really liked the tomatoes but the downside is that the water from the tomatoes cooks out and makes it kind of runny. Where Max has me beat, however, is the use of power tools to finish it up. If you recall, I recommended using your broiler to brown the cheese at the end… turns out you could also use a heat gun commonly used for drying/melting paint. You just got learned.

Eggs en Cocotte

Carmen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:26:37 +0000

I love breakfast. (ok, and lunch and dinner) I’ve been trying to perfect Eggs en Cocotte for years now and I still can’t make it perfectly but it has gotten better over years at least. I fail better at it nowadays. Its takes a long time to make but the end result is so cute and yummy that it makes it worth it – most of the time… unless you mess it up and then breakfast becomes a frustrating event that makes me want to cry. Aaannyways, today was successful. You can make it with alot of different ingredients. Today I chose leeks, but in the past I have made it with bacon and onions or mushrooms or fennel – you could get imaginative.

Chop the leeks up real fine and saute them for about 15 minutes (do not burn them like I did!). Grate a little bit of nutmeg into the leeks while they’re cooking, add salt and pepper. Then put the leeks into buttered ramekins, crack a couple of eggs in each one, add salt and pepper. Then put the ramekins in a casserole dish and pour boiling water into the casserole dish to surround the ramekins, and then put it in the oven! Half way through put some parmesan cheese (or gruyere) on there. I think it takes about 20 minutes at 375 degrees but its kind of something you need to decide on by watching it, its tricky. Sometimes the center will still be runny while the rest is perfectly done. I like to take it out at that point and finish it up in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Voila! (one thing I would change is maybe to cook it in the broiler (if you have one, which I don’t) so the cheese gets nice and toasty)

Sunday Project: Croque Madame…

Carmen — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:39:44 +0000

I decided to try this recipe this morning. Here’s how it went:

The conslusion is that it tasted pretty darn good!