Have you met Lidia, Lidia the tattooed lady?
The leftover sausage and spinach gnocchi filling has been sitting in the fridge since Thursday night, and it hasn’t been waiting patiently. HEY YOU, it’s been yelling. YOU WITH THE COOKIE CRUMBS ON YOUR SHIRT. EAT ME. I assume it will only become more abusive as time goes on, so I had no choice but to use it in some eggs en cocotte this morning. Eggs en cocotte are also called shirred eggs, or, as they are now known around here, “the best fucking eggs in the whole entire world” or “crack in a cup.”
On rare occasions, putting a bunch of tasty things together in one dish manages to completely flop. Other times, it leads to something good, but not transcendent. And sometimes, it creates a dish where the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts, and you want to make a giant vat of the dish and roll around in it for the rest of eternity while a children’s gospel choir sings and unicorns shoot magical rainbows out of their magical asses.
Today’s ingredients by themselves put us on the path to success: Eggs? Check! Heavy cream? Check! Spinach? Check! Sausage? Double A+ check! Best fucking butter ever? Check!
Put them all together? Kill me now! All other breakfast egg dishes are dead to me.
Pow! Zing!
This was my first eggs en cocotte, and it will not be the last. You’ll have to pardon the beige-ness of the finished dish; it’s time for a major grocery trip around here. I had no fresh herbs to accent with, and I wasn’t about to sprinkle the top with tropical flavor jujyfruits just to add color.
The spinach/sausage stuffing provided a little heat and bite to cut through the creamy richness of the eggs. The cream brought the stuffing and egg together into a harmonious, unctuous whole and kept the dish from being simply eggs sitting on spinach. A pat of the best fucking butter ever dotted on top added a hint of salt, a hint of the nutty grassiness that we know and love, and a hint of sin. A bite with a bit of all the elements was a perfect blend of gooey, creamy, warm and chewy – everything you want in a breakfast on a cold rainy morning. You can sub in almost anything you want for the stuffing I used, so it’s a great way to use up leftovers.
If you don’t make these eggs, you’ll be sorry. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.
Psychotically Good Eggs en Cocotte
1/2 c. leftover spinach and sausage filling*
4 fresh eggs
3 tbsp. heavy cream
2 dabs butter, plus an extra dab
Pre-heat your oven to 375.
Butter 2 oven-safe ramekins. Put 1/4 cup of filling in the bottom of each ramekin. Drizzle 1 1/2 tablespoons of heavy cream over each, and crack 2 eggs into each, being careful not to break the yolks. Top each with a dab of butter.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the whites are mostly set and the yolks are still a bit runny (you can adjust this according to however you like your eggs – more/less well-done). Serve immediately. It would not be remiss to top with a bit of grated cheese.
* The ramekins can be assembled up to 24 hours in advance and baked off when you’re ready to eat. You can substitute whatever you’d like for the sausage filling – other leftover meats of veggies, fresh veggies, etc.
Thursday Night Smackdown 
sounds like a total hack dish to me. where’s the blood? the sweat? the tears? the cheese?
ok. kidding. i want some. funny enough i got some kinda baked eggs idea from our jennifer of ‘last night’s dinner’ and made a similar dish using speck and fresh thyme, etc on new years day morning. was a big hit. but i forgot to blog about it. and now i just lost the photo’s from a hard drive trauma on thursday. so there is no proof. but i wouldn’t lie. really. not about baked eggs. not after all we’ve meant to each other.
bottom line is i love baked eggs or as you say – en cocotte. because you are so very classy. yes you are.
wow that looks seriously good. for some reason, some dishes just strike me as awesome even though they are so simple.
this is one of them.
Seems me and you speak the same language hahahahah. I love the “F” bomb. And other not so lady like talk. Stop by my blog anytime. I will be back to read more of yours!! Have a grand fucking day!
Crack in a cup? Any recipe with the word ‘crack’ in it gets my seal of approval XD. Sounds SO good…
I am in need of cultured butter after reading this month’s Saveur. Yay! Another thing to obsess over. Having the best salt wasn’t enough! I think they have the French cultured butter at New Seasons.
I will definitely try making eggs this way. I even have ramekins and everything.
Oh my god, this sounds friggin good. I just threw away the sausage/broccoli rabe stuffing I had sitting in my fridge too… I let it go bad. Now I’m going to have to make some more just for the baked eggs!
I just can’t seem to get enough of eggs lately, and I must try a version of this recipe. Gotta get me some of that cultured butter.
Crack in a cup! I love it! I’ll have to remember that one. I loooove those eggs. They look beautiful just as they are. I have got to make them.
claudia: of course you made some baked eggs, dear.
ernie: it is the truth.
stacy: thanks for visiting and commenting!
indigo: it is so good. and it is like crack. well, what i imagine crack to be like.
heather: definitely give them a try. but the butter, oh, the butter…you’ve gotta get some.
robin: drat! but it would be totally worth it to re-make it just for these eggs.
life: yes, yes you do.
susan: let me know how you like ’em!
wow, never knew such an egg dish existed, sounds delicious
Late to the party, but I gotta tell you: These are the best fucking eggs I have ever eaten. I bow down before you. You are my hero. I have pizza-burned the roof of my mouth two nights in a row by shovelling these onto toast and cramming them down my throat. I just pop the blister and keep on eating. Sooooooo good.
This has become one of my go-to dishes (with veg under the eggs and cheese to cushion all those veg). I love your website and your recipes. (I tried your pork chop/sriracha recipe and smoked up my apartment, but the chop was delicious, once the smoke cleared.)