œufs cocotte au mascarpone

So this week, I decided to make a savoury dish, and I named it something French because it makes it sounds more glamorous than what it is. Which is to say, baked egg.

It was SO DELICIOUS to scoff after a long swim on a cold, wintery day. I also made a chipotle potato cake (latke) to munch alongside which gave it a really pleasant warmth from the heat of the chipotle and made it just that little bit more filling.

Want to do it yourself? Well it wasn't particularly technical, but as I said it was very delicious, so here's what I did :

Ingredients (for 1 person, but you can easily scale to more or to the size of your appetite):

• 2 strips streaky bacon
• 65g mascarpone
• 2 egg
• ~50g fresh corned beef (i.e. from a deli counter, not spam)
• 100g plain baking potato, grated and stirred for ages in a sieve until it's dry
• chipotle oil or adobo sauce
• a sprinkle of chopped chives
• salt, pepper

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (375°F).
2. Cook bacon until very crispy (or until it's how you like it, I suppose). Set on paper towels to allow the fat to absorb so you can feel very conscientious about eating naughty little things.
3. Put the mascarpone in the cocotte (or if you have a ramekin or some small baking dish, that will work as well). Crack an egg on top. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
4. Sprinkle chopped corned beef and chives on the mascarpone/egg.
5. Place in oven for 12 minutes or until the egg is cooked like you like.
6. In the meantime, make the latkes: whisk the remaining egg and add a tablespoon at a time to the dried-off grated potato until it binds together to form a little cake. Fry in adobo/chipotle oil.
7. Take out the cocotte/ramekin and EAT THE FOOD with the potato cake. Eat the potato latke with your hands, because I think it made it even more delicious.

This dish is without a doubt the definition of something being more than the sum of its parts. Gorgeous and satisfying and so utterly simple.