Egg in Cocotte

Egg in Cocotte is a fun and colourful way to brighten your weekend's breakfast. And it´s one of those recipes where you can choose how many to make and what to use according to what you have available at the moment. You can use left overs you have already prepared or vegetables already cut in your fridge , which makes it a very easy and quick treat to make. It is just wonderfully neat and tidy, perfect to start a relaxed day.

Because this was my first experience, I made 8 different eggs, with small variations of ingredients between them to see what would work better for my palate. But next time it will be just one for me and one for my boyfriend. And to be completely honest I overcooked them. The recipe I followed (well follow is a strong word) said 20 min. at 180.C and maybe, for some specialists in eggs, that would sound like to much right from the start, but like I said, this was my first time attempting anything of the kind.

In essence you want to have:

1 tea spoon of cream or crème fresh in the bottom of the cocotte.

Some finely diced vegetables on top of the cream, asparagus and yellow pepper (previously cooked) work wonders. I also tried some pieces of bacon, it´s good but very rich.

Some sort of herb or seasoning, I used chives, curry and a red pepper "Achar" (Indian sauce, kind of sweet and sour).

Open an egg on top of the previous ingredients.

Season the eggs with salt, black pepper and grazed parmesan.

Pre-heat the oven at 180.C. Put the cocottes in a tray with boiling water up to half their hight. Cook in the oven for something like 10 min (like I said I overcooked mine so I´m cutting on the time here). You want the whites of the eggs to be hard but the yolk should be runny. Have it with croutons or small toasted pieces of bread. 

 And hey, if you feel like being a purist just forget most of the ingredients and simply have a runny egg in a pretty little pot!