A Month-of-Eggs: Nid d'oeuf

Baked Egg Nest

For the next three posts, I’m going to give you a series of eggs cooked “in something”. All three are vegetarian dinner alternatives for when you are limiting your meat. Obviously, they are equally great for breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner.

These kinds of dishes are also great when you are trying to serve a crowd a nutritious breakfast. They are all prepared in the oven, so you can do a lot of the prep in advance and then just let them bake and serve right from the oven.

And, no. Not one of them is an egg casserole. (I’ll have a couple of non-traditional ones later this month!)

Another meringue recipe! And you can use this with that yummy Hollandaise sauce 

I shared with you. Or not. Just top with some sharp cheese like Asiago!

This recipe is seriously fun. Kids will love eating their eggs this way, especially if they can help make it. In fact, it appeared in a children’s French cookbook I own. You can find recipes on the Internet for this and other like recipes.

Today, Egg Nests are up. I suppose you might call them Cloud Eggs and serve them with cinnamon cloud bread. That could be yummy!

 

Here’s the adapted recipe, “Nid d’oeuf”, from the book, La Cusine est un jeu d’enfants by Michel Oliver. This is a fun book with primitive illustrations such as a child might draw and very large print. It would be fun to cook from with kids!

Nid d’oeuf (Egg Nests) (serves 2-4)

4 eggs, separated, room temperature

1/3 teaspoon cream of tartar.

¼ cup Asiago cheese (or cheese of your choice)

1 cup Hollandaise sauce (or more cheese for topping)

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put parchment paper (or a Silpat sheet) on a cookie sheet.

Separate the eggs, keeping yolks in different dishes to keep from breaking.

In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy with your mixer on low speed. Add cream of tartar and beat on medium speed. Once stiff peaks form, fold in cheese very, very gently.

Nests

Make four equal meringue piles on the cookie sheet. Make an indentation in each (a nest) so you can add the egg yolk later. Place the cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven for 3 minutes.

With the cookie sheet still on the rack, pull out oven rack and put an egg yolk in the center of each next.

Egg in Nest before baking

Push rack back into the oven and bake for 3-5 minutes more (depending on how done you like your eggs—we like them runny). Serve immediately.

Serve with ¼ cup hot Hollandaise sauce on each nest (or more cheese or none).

This makes a filling main dish if accompanied by fruit salad and a muffin.

NOTE: If you are a "meringue virgin", I have made some notes on previous recipes that might help. The main thing is to use room temperature egg whites for whipping and use a bowl and utensils with NO oily residue. Add the cream of tartar after the eggs are foamy not at the beginning.

Lots of recipes have you adding extracts or other ingredients like cheese here. And remember that “fold” is not a synonym for “stir”!  To fold in something, is to lift the bowl ingredients and incorporate from below. Stop when it looks just done. Better to under mix than to flatten the meringue with too much handling.

DH’s Rating: 5+ Tongues Up   He liked the presentation and agreed this could be a good company dish. He loved the cheese flavor in the meringue, too. But, he thought it would be even better with bacon or ham, and I had a hard time convincing him this was a complete protein as is.

A Month-of-Eggs: Curried Kale Eggs

Before we get going today with Curried Kale Eggs, I had to share a picture of a way I used some of my wonderful tarragon Hollandaise sauce from earlier this week--http://bit.ly/1SRihLw  Check it out at the end of this recipe.

On to today’s recipe. Here I am trying to sneak more kale into our meals, but it wasn’t as successful (with DH) as I had hoped. Still, I liked it and will probably try this again when he is off hiking in Utah. Good protein, good greens!

 

Curried Kale Eggs (serves two for breakfast or lunch; add an egg to each plate if for dinner)

2 eggs

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 green onions cut in pieces

2 cups of kale

2 teaspoons curry + more for sprinkling

salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in skillet. Cook eggs-over-easy-Sharon’s-way (see note). Remove to heated dish and set aside.

Put 2 teaspoons water in skillet and add onions. Cook for about 1 minute.

Add kale. Sprinkle on curry, salt, and pepper. Put on lid and cook until kale is tender and a bright green, about 2 minutes.

Put kale on a plate and slide an egg on top. Sprinkle with a bit more curry on the egg. Serve with whole wheat roll or toast and a fruit salad dressed with yogurt.

NOTE:  I can’t make “eggs over easy.” They are “eggs over hard”, as far as I am concerned. I almost always break the yolk. So, the trick I learned years ago was to add a teaspoon or so of water and put a lid on the eggs. They get that white cover on top that a lot of people like. Easy peasy!

DH’s Rating: 2 Tongues Up   He could tell it was kale this time, and he just doesn’t care for the flavor. The egg was fine but he didn’t care for its base. Oh, well! I can make this for myself.

I had some leftover cooked turkey, a handful of leftover spaghetti, and some leftover noodles. I tossed it all with some tarragon Hollandaise sauce and put it in a shallow dish to bake at 250 degrees for about ½ hour. Before putting into the oven, I added a bit more tarragon and about ½ cup Asiago cheese. DEEEElicious! Use your Hollandaise to put together disparate ingredients and get an unreproducible dish because it’s leftovers renewed!