Baked Eggs with Bacon and Kale

My best friend treated me to breakfast at The Little Griddle last week and I enjoyed a delicious baked egg dish served in a small cast iron skillet. It was made with bacon, eggs, and spinach and topped with panko and parmesan. It was delicious, so much so I wanted to try to recreate it in spirit, if not in form. I don’t have the right size skillet, so I used a small baking dish.

I decided to go with kale rather than spinach. I love spinach in salads and in spanokopita, but in cooking, I am very much in agreement with Imani Grandy. You think you have enough and you start cooking it and it disappears.

Is there a vegetable that’s a bigger liar than spinach?

— Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) March 21, 2018

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It took me five trials to get it right. The first three times, it still tasted good, but getting the eggs baked so the yolks remained soft and runny while the panko toasted was tricky. If the panko was toasted, the egg yolks were hard, broiling resulted in toasted panko with semi-raw eggs. I tried different temperatures but finally succeeded by baking the eggs until nearly done before adding the panko and broiling. During my trials, I tried different spices and discovered that I really liked sage and cinnamon the most. However, cumin and red pepper flakes was also tasty. So was cinnamon and cayenne. I decided on going with sage and cinnamon to satisfy my love of umami. So here goes.

Ingredients

• 2 slices of bacon, cut into small cubes
• 1/2 tsp of dried sage
• 1/2 tsp of cinnamon
• 1/2 cup diced yellow onions
• 1 stem of kale, cleaned and stripped off the stem, chopped finely
• 1/2 cup of sour cream
• 2 eggs
• salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350°
2. Put a skillet on medium heat, add bacon, sage, cinnamon, salt, and pepper. Sauté until the aroma fills the room.
3. Add onions and kale and continue to cook until done. Ideally, the bacon, onions, and kale are all the same size.
4. Remove from heat and place in the bottom of a small baking dish or two ramekins. If you have a small enough skillet, you can leave it in the skillet and skip this step.
5. Put 1/2 cup of sour cream on top of the spinach and bacon. You could use cream or yogurt. Don’t stir it in, lay it in top because the eggs bake into it, sort of like coddled eggs.
6. Carefully crack two eggs and lay on top. Add salt and pepper and bake for about 10 minutes.
7. After 10 minutes, check the eggs, the whites should be close to done and the yolks still runny. This can be anywhere from 10 to 12 minutes, depending on your stove and the size of the eggs.
8. Remove from oven and sprinkle with panko all over the top. Turn oven to broil
9. Broil for 3 to 5 minutes. Keep your eye on it so the panko does not burn.

Needless to say, this is delicious. I would not experiment over and over on the same recipe for two weeks if I were not trying to get to something perfectly delicious. In many ways, this is like coddled eggs, but I didn’t have cream and love sour cream with kale so much I had no interest in buying cream for an authentic coddled egg. If I had cream, then I would have needed to add some parmesan to get a bit of sour flavor to counter the sweetness of the cream. I thought sour cream easier and even tastier.

I think this dish could be made with collards, mustard greens, spinach (obviously), kale, and any other flavorful greens. Variations could be made with fennel, cauliflower, and more. Experiment yourself, just cook everything, put the sour cream on top, then the eggs, bake. Add panko, and broil. Go for it and let me know how your own experiments pan out.

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Masa Cakes with Kale & Sweet Potato Salad with Over-Easy Egg

This was easy and delicious. I have been experimenting with masa harina to figure out ways to cook with it since I got a huge bag from Harvest Share. I’m not fond of cornbread  so I wanted to go in a different direction. I made the salad first and made more than I needed for the masa cakes.

For the salad, this makes enough for 8 masa cakes, but is also good on grilled cheese and with sandwiches. So I don’t mind.

• 1/2 bunch of kale, cleaned, stripped off the stem, and finely chopped. This is about 3 cups of kale.
• 1/2 TBSP olive oil
• Juice from 1 fresh lemon
• 1 tsp kosher salt.
• 1 small red onion, thinly sliced.
• 1 medium sweet potato, peeled,  cut into small pieces, and parboiled in salted water.

Mix these first four ingredients together and rub the oil, salt, and lemon into the kale to soften it. Add the sliced onions. Drain the sweet potatoes and add to the kale. Let rest for an hour or more in the fridge.

For the Masa Cakes, this makes four masa cakes.

• 1 cup whole milk
• 1½ tablespoons  butter, sliced
• 1 cup masa harina corn flour
• Dash of Kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/3 cup grated cheese (I used pepper jack)
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Mix together the masa, salt, sugar, use a pastry cutter to cut in the butter, add milk and stir together until smooth, add the cheese and mix it in.  Divide into 4 balls.

Using a piece of wax paper, but one ball of dough between two layers of wax paper. Press flat to about 1/4 inc. I used a small bowl and pressed down to make the edges smooth, tossing remaining dough back in the bowl to use. This will make 4 masa cakes.

Heat a griddle on medium and put about 1/2 tbsp of olive oil on it. When it’s heated, put two on the griddle to cook, about 3 to 4 minutes on each side.

When you’re ready to serve, fry an egg over-easy. You could poach them instead.

Assemble by putting a torta cake on your plate. Then put a handful of kale salad on top of the cake. Add the over-easy egg so when you eat it, the egg dresses the salad.

Makes four servings.

 

Grilled Cheese with Fennel and Kale

My Imperfect box came yesterday and I got a fennel bulb. I love fennel and want people to cook with it a lot more so it becomes more common and less expensive. This time I made a grilled cheese sandwich using some of the 5 pounds of kale I got from the Oregon Food Bank’s Harvest Share.

So what did I do?

I put a cast iron skillet on the stove over medium heat and added 1 tbsp of olive oil. While it heated, I used a mandoline to thin slice a medium-sized yellow onion and the small fennel bulb. I tossed the thin slices in the skillet, added a bit of salt, and sauteed until tender. Meanwhile, I chopped up about 2 cups of raw kale. I pulled the leaves off the stems, rolled to chiffonade. When the onions and fennel began to caramelize, tossed in the kale and covered to let it cook for about 5 minutes.

I removed the veggies from the skillet and dropped some butter, putting down one slice of whole wheat bread, I added thinly sliced sharp cheddar cheese and then forked some of the veggies on top of the cheese. When it was toasted and ready to flip, I added some more cheese on top of the veggies and added the second slice of bread and flipped the sandwich. In a few minutes, it was beautifully toasted.

So, this has an unctuous kind of savory deliciousness. People think of fennel as sweet, but it’s not and when it’s cooked it mellows even more. Kale is best with strong contrasts and fennel is ideal.

 

Kale Salad with Rutabagas, Apples, and Carrots

I went to Harvest Share at the Ortiz Center yesterday and took home a huge bag of kale, sacks of carrots, rutabagas, and onions and thought this sounds like salad.

I stripped the kale leaves off the stems and chiffonaded the leaves. I put a big plastic container on my scale to set the tare weight to zero and added the chopped kale until I had a half pound of prepared, chopped leaves. It was sort of heaping over the top of the container, but that’s okay. Kale is one of those duplicitous vegetables that lose their volume when you cook with it…even if all you do is massage oil, vinegar, and salt into it. That heaping over the top kale will be just over half full in no time.

So, once I measured the kale, I added 1 TBSP of olive oil, 1 TSBP of apple cider vinegar, and 1/2 tsp of salt. Using my fingers, I worked this into the kale, massaging it toward tenderness. It lost about 1/3 of its volume. I covered the container and set it aside, unrefrigerated, to continue “cooking”.

While it “cooked”, I made the dressing and chopped my veggies and fruit.

In a bowl, I zested one lemon before juicing it, To the zest and juice of one lemon, I added 1 TBSP of soy sauce and 1 TBSP of maple syrup, and some pepper. I stirred and set aside. There’s no oil in this dressing because it will get plenty from the kale.

I peeled an apple and diced it into pieces about 1/3 inch squares.

I peeled and chopped a medium-sized carrot – 1/3 inch squares.

1 diced 1/2 a yellow onion.

I peeled a rutabaga and chopped it into 1/3 inch squares. Peel deeply into the rutabaga, not just the outer skin, but also that heavy, woody rind. It’s usually just easier to cut it away.

All the pieces should be about the same size, as though making a chopped salad.

Add the vegetables to the kale. Toss with the dressing. I put the lid on and shook and shook and shook to distribute it evenly. Ideally, the salad will be fully dressed, but there won’t be any liquid gathering in the bottom.

The kale has that earthiness that makes for a great foundation for salad. The carrots add sweetness and the rutabagas and lemons add a bright tang. You get just a bit of sweet and sharp from the onions. The maple syrup does not make this sweet but instead add this wonderful note for the aftertaste.

 

 

Roasted Root Vegetable and Kale Soup

Sometimes you think you have the ingredients you need and then you cut into something and discover you need to rethink things on the fly. I hate onions, garlic, and linguiça sauteeing for a Caldo Verde when I discovered only a couple of my potatoes were any good. I suppose this is why you are supposed to do mise en place before you cook one thing, but I chop while I cook and probably always will. Okay, time to cook on the fly.

• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 linquiça sausage sliced into 1/2 slices.
• 1 tsp red chile flakes
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 2 cans of diced tomatoes
• 1 rutabaga, peeled and chopped
• 2 carrots, scrubbed and chopped
• 2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 3 cups of finely chopped fresh kale
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• kosher salt

So, starting with what was already cooking:

In a stock pot, I heated 2 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat. I added yellow onions and sauteed until beginning to brown. I added the garlic, oregano, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper, and linguiça and cooked for about 3 minutes. Now this was when I would be adding the potatoes for Caldo Verde, but no…

I turned on the oven to roast some root vegetables rather than boil potatoes.

So, I decided to use rutabaga and thought I needed a brighter flavor. I added diced tomatoes and added the same amount of water as I added tomatoes. (I filled the empty cans, shook them a bit, so everything dumped into the stock pot.) I turned the heat to a low simmer.

Meanwhile. I tossed the chopped rutabaga, carrots, and potatoes in a roasting pan with 1 TBSP of olive oil and a sprinkling of kosher salt. I roasted them at 450°, turning them after about 15 minutes. After about 25-30 minutes they were tender and browned.

 

The tomato sauce/soup has been simmering away very slowly for about 30 minutes. I added the kale and let it wilt in the soup until tender, about 5 minutes. I then added the roasted vegetables and added a bit of salt and pepper to taste.

This is definitely something to make again and again. It has a bright, fresh taste with just the tiniest bit of heat. The carrots balance the rutabaga with a bit of sweetness, the linquiça is amazing as always, and the tomatoes and kale are made for each other. It’s a delicious soup, a bit lighter than Caldo Verde, and beautifully vibrant.

This made 8 servings, but that means 8 meals of progressively more flavorful soup since it always is better the next day.

Curried Turnips and Kale

I put a cast iron skillet on the stove at a low medium (4 out of 10) heat and put about 1/4 cup of sauteed celery and onion mix in the pan to thaw. (When I got 10 heads of celery from Harvest Share, I sauteed half of them with onions and made the other half into mirepoix and froze them in freezer bags, so I just pulled out a bag, whacked it against the counter a few times, and dumped 1/2 cup of it in the pan.

While the onions and celery thawed in the pan, I peeled a turnip and cut into chunks a little less than an inch square. I added some salt and pepper and let cook for about 4 minutes. Coming back to stir it a bit, I added 1 TBSP of rice vinegar and 1 tsp of curry powder. I stirred a few minutes longer before adding 1/2 cup of fresh kale. I put the lid on and let it cook for a few more minutes, removing when the turnips were tender.

You don’t really taste the vinegar, but there is a lightness to it that comes from that bit of acid. The curry adds a nice bit of heat and the turnips are such a bright, sharp flavor that balances well with the earthy kale.

Breakfast Tostada with Kale, Eggs, and Lemon

This took less than five minutes to make. I heated two pans on the stove, one set at about 4/10 and the other at 6/10 on the heat dial, a low and a high medium. In the low medium, I added no oil at all. I put about 1/4 of a small onion cut in thin slices and about 1 cup of chopped kale, chopped up. I added a bit of salt and pepper and a few red pepper flakes. I squeezed the juice from half a lemon on it and let it cook. I did not want it to get overly cooked, just warmed.

When the kale was about half done, I melted 1/4 tsp of butter in the other pan and cracked an egg in the melted butter. I added salt and pepper, and let it cook for a minute.

I put the tostada on a plate, spooned the kale and onions on the tostada, then I flipped the egg for a few seconds and placed the egg on top of the kale. When eating, I broke the yolk right away so it blended with the kale and onions. The kale alone tastes too strongly of the lemon juice until you mix the egg yolk…and then it’s a perfect lemony sauce .

This is a pleasant mix of textures, soft creamy eggs, crunchy tostada and soft, but still toothsome veggies. The egg yolk and lemon are a light and creamy sauce for the salty tostada and the sharp onions and slightly bitter kale. It’s fast, easy, and delicious.

Kale & Cabbage Salad with Toasted Pepitas & Plum Vinaigrette

I sliced 1/4 head of cabbage into thin ribbons and chopped up an equal amount of fresh kale in similar thin ribbons.

In a large pot, I brought 2 cups of water to a boil with a teaspoon of salt. I added the cabbage and kale and put a lid on it, letting them cook for one minute. I strained the water off and set them in the fridge to cool.

Meanwhile, I sliced up 2 plums and sautéed them in 2 TBSP of white wine vinegar and 2 tsp of soy sauce with 2 tsp of Tajín. I added a bit of salt and pepper, a tsp of sugar and stirred until the plums were just about to break down, but were still holding together. I poured the dressing on the kale and cabbage, stirred and set back in the fridge to cool.

Before serving, I toasted the pepitas in a bit of peanut oil with smoked paprika.

This made two large servings or four small salads. It’s a great blend of hearty veggies, sweet fruit and tangy vinegar. The pepitas add a bit of crunch and umami.

Linguiça with Cauliflower, Kale and Grape Tomatoes

This was a delicious and hearty casserole that took very little effort and about 20 minutes to make. I sliced 1 piece of linguiça sausage (about 6 oz.) into 1/4 inch pieces. Then I chopped up 1/4 of a yellow onion. I tossed them together into a medium low sauté pan, since the linquiça has plenty of fat for the dish without any additional oil.

I then chopped up 2 cups of cauliflower and added the cauliflower, and some salt and pepper, to sauté for a bit. Meanwhile, I cleaned 5 pieces of kale, removing the stems. I rolled the kale up and sliced in ribbons and then did a quick chop cross-wise of the ribbons. This made about 4 cups of kale. Kale cooks down a lot, so when cooking you always want to add more than you think you want.  I added the kale, another bit of salt and pepper to the pan. While that cooked, I quartered grape tomatoes – until I had 1 cup of them. When the kale was about half done, I added 2 TBSP of red wine vinegar and the tomatoes and let cook for about 4 more minutes.

The vinegar is critical to elevating the flavors. It helps the flavors blend. The linguiça is spicy and adds rich flavor to the vegetables. This made 4 servings of delicious casserole.

Kale & Grapefruit Salad

I used a small bunch of lacinato kale, washed, removed the stems and chopped the leaves. This made about 8 cups of chopped kale. I added 1 TBSP of olive oil, 1 tsp of kosher salt and 1 inch of fresh ginger, grated. With my hand, I massaged the oil into the kale, softening the leaves.

With a knife, I supremed a grapefruit, cutting off the ends and the peel and pith. Then I used the knife to cut the flesh off in segments between the skin. I tossed the grapefruit into the salad.

I then added 2 TBSP of mango nectar and 2 TBSP of 100% cranberry juice (unsweetened). I put a lid on the container and shook it to distribute everything evenly and let it set in the fridge for an hour.

When serving, I added a bit of pepper on top. It’s a delicious tart and sweet salad with a hearty kale foundation. The ginger adds heat to balance the sweet mango.