Oeufs en Cocotte

I've been ill lately so I've spent a lot of time watching TV and reading food blogs. Well, I've spent a lot more time than I usually do reading food blogs. I have bookmarked all of these wonderful blogs so I pick one and then read through all of the archives. One such blog is Confessions of a Cardamom Addict (Jasmine has such gorgeous cats!!!). In one post Jasmine made oeufs en concotte adapted from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I love a nice soft egg and since I am terrible at poaching them I'm always on the lookout for an easy way to get a soft yolk.

I followed the links on Jasmine's post to a gorgeous post on Beyond Salmon and then came across this recipe posted by Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini. You would think that I wouldn't need multiple recipes to make what is basically eggs broken into a ramekin and then cooked in a water bath, but my excuse is that I was engaging in research.

The good part about this recipe is that it involves very little effort on my part. I used cream cheese as my creamy base, I threw in some bacon I had previously chopped up and added some chives. Sitting at the kitchen table, I smooshed my bacon pieces and chives around in my cream cheese and then added them to a greased ramekin. I cracked in two eggs as it was a large ramekin and one egg looked so lonely!

I have recently discovered that my oven runs 20 degrees C colder than its dial (stupid oven), so I preheated it to 240 degrees C and then added my ramekin in its water bath. As I said, I like my eggs runny, so I set my timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, my egg whites weren't even white yet (stupid oven) so I put it back in for another 10 minutes. It took my oven 20 minutes to cook two eggs. I used a small tray for the water bath too, so there wasn't too much water to heat.

The white still wasn't quite set, but I was willing to take the risk because I wanted runny yolk, however my yolks were set hard. I'm not quite sure how that happened. It was all right in the end though, I mashed everything up and had a weird creamy warm egg salad to dip my soldiers in. It tasted very very good, it was the best breakfast I've had all week!

See the blogs linked above for your choice of recipes.