Prep: 20

Cook: 50

Total: 1 10

Servings: 3 people

Course: Breakfast

Cuisine: Fusion

Label: Baked eggs

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Connie’s notes

Eggs en cocotte is a French dish of baked (shirred) egg with firm white and runny yolk. Cooking this dish requires cocottes or something similar. Cocottes are single-serve baking pots that are essentially mini Dutch ovens with handles. They’re heatproof and heavy. We don’t have traditional cocottes here at home but we do have a dozen ovenproof bowls with handles that fairly resemble the French cooking vessel.

You just coat the inside of bowls with oil (or softened butter which I prefer), crack an egg or eggs directly into each one, and add whatever delicious ingredients you fancy — herbs, cheese, cream… Then, you bake the eggs in bain-marie (water bath) until the whites are set but the yolks are still runny.

So, just to be clear, you can add pretty much anything to the eggs. You can add seafood or meat, or just cream and a combination of cheeses. In this recipe, the eggs bake in a bed of ragu made with sausage meat and bacon.

The sausages can be sweet, herby, garlicky or hot. Note that the final flavor of the dish will depend, in part, to the flavor of the sausages.

What size of eggs you should use depends on the size of the baking bowls and the amount of ragu you spoon into it. Ideally, the egg should remain inside the groove and not overflow to cover the ragu.

Use your preferred cheese. Just make sure that it combines well with the flavor of the sausage meat.

Ingredients

Ragu

300 grams sausages (10.5 oz) casings discarded
200 grams belly bacon (7 oz) thinly sliced
1 onion peeled and roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic peeled and chopped
salt
pepper
2 pinches ground oregano
sugar (optional)
2 bay leaves
1 can tomatoes (400 grams / 14 oz)

Eggs and topping

1 ½ teaspoons softened butter divided
3 eggs
grated cheese as much as you like
fresh greens to garnish

Instructions

Cook the ragu

Place a cold pan on the stove and spread the sausage meat and bacon in it. With the heat set on medium-low, cook the meats together until you see a generous amount of rendered fat.
Add the onion and garlic, oregano, a few pinches of salt and pepper (and, optionally, a bit of sugar), and cook until the onion pieces are translucent.
Add the canned tomatoes and bay leaves and cook, stirring, until simmering.
Cover the pan and cook over low heat until the liquid has reduced by half.
Taste, adjust the seasonings if needed, and set aside.

Assemble the dish

Preheat the oven to 350F.
Fill a kettle with water and heat.
Drop half a teaspoon of butter into each of three single-serve baking bowls and spread to coat the bottom and sides.
Spoon the ragu into the bowls until half full.
Create grooves (indentations) at the center of the ragu by pushing the meat to the edges using a teaspoon.
Slide an egg into the groove. Cover the egg with grated cheese.

Bake the dish

Place the bowls in a baking dish then pour hot water into the dish (be careful not to let any water into the bowls) until the lower half of the bowls are surbmerged.
Bake the ragu and eggs for 20 minutes or just until the egg whites are set but the yolks are still jiggly.