I have discovered the huge problem with taking the long-haul ferry to France and stocking up with huge amounts of wine on the way back… It’s fairly obvious, but I didn’t realise (more likely ignored the flippin’ obvious) that my wine consumption would increase as a direct result. It is waaaay to easy to crack open another bottle or two and put the world to rights until 4am if you’ve got 12 bottles lying there just waiting to be consumed. Consequently yesterday was spent in a slightly hazy state of trackie bums, comfort food and movies. Oh and 3 hours of ironing – I know – don’t you all just crave to be part of my rock and roll lifestyle – yep, thought not. It got towards dinner time after what felt like the longest time without food, it had, in fact, been all of 2 hours. The remains of cottage pie I was informed was not enough for two – it clearly was – but none the less I went for a hunt through the fridge and came up trumps with this little beauty.
Baked Eggs & chorizo
Serves 2 as a starter
These are cooked in a Bain-Marie so you will need a baking tin as well as the ramekins
INGREDIENTS
10cm piece of chorizo
3 chestnut mushrooms
A squeeze of garlic purée or a clove finely chopped
1tbsp fresh flat leaf parsley
2tsp creme fraiche
2 eggs
1tsp fresh grated Parmesan
METHOD
- Pre heat the oven to 170. Place the clean empty ramekins in to the baking tin and boil the kettle for later
- Place a small saucepan on the heat – no oil necessary due to the fat in the chorizo
- Peel and chop the Chorizo and mushrooms into small chunks
- Add the chorizo to the pan (try to keep it moving in the pan so it doesn’t burn), once it’s been sizzling for a couple of minutes add the mushroom chunks
- Sqeeze in the garlic into the pan and stir
- Add a 2 tsp of water to stop the ingredients catching on the base of the pan and add in the chopped parsley
- Stir through the crème fraiche and pour the lot into the ramekin
- Crack an egg into each one – making sure it doesn’t overflow
- Place the baking tin into the oven – pull the shelf out of the oven slightly and pour hot water into the tin until 1/3 way up the side of the ramekin
- Close the oven door and bake for 10 minutes
- After 10 minutes sprinkle the grated parmesan over the top and change the oven to grill
- Grill for no more than 2 minutes otherwise you’ll have a hard yolk
- Remove from the bain-marie and place on a small place and serve – either on their own or with a bit of bread to mop up the creamy bits.
As an aside – I didn’t put any seasoning in this as the chorizo has so much flavour, coupled with the rich crème fraiche, egg and salty Parmesan on top it shouldn’t really need anything except maybe a teeny grind of black pepper when serving.
Also – on a completely different note – the layout of this blog will be changing soon – it annoys me everytime I click on it, so please bare with the messiness of it at the moment. I am working on a solution.