With respect to eggs, I didn’t think there was room for any surprises any longer. I love them and I cook them in many, many ways, God only knows how many, so try to magine my eyes when I happened on this Chef John recipe posted on his Allrecipe feed. Yep, they went WIDE, as big as my cat’s eyes upon spotting a bird on our backyard fence. What better way to start an absolutely fantastic Sunday, no? I’ve adopted and adapted this recipe to what I thought out fam would like. In short, it was dynamite!
This could be a very flexible recipe, ripe for adding or changing some things but apart from the eggs it’s base doesn’t require too many ingredients. Let’s group them in two main categories. For the yogurt mix we have dill and minced garlic, seasoned to taste, but we can have anything from a sprinkle of cayenne pepper to a ripple of some sort of spicy chutney or anything that tickles you fancy really. The second category would be the topping for the eggs, in this case a Mexican chilli, cumin and smoked Spanish paprika infused butter. Obviously olive oil can be substituted instead of butter and rosemary or truffles or thyme or whatever else comes to your mind can be use as spices/ aromas. It might not be Turkish any longer as a result but it will be yours to discover and cherish.
Best thing to start with is the infused butter. It comes together quickly but it needs to be set aside and left alone for about 15 minutes to infuse and develop, so it will be ready by the time we assemble the dish. I melted butter over medium heat and waited for it to start making slight “popping” sounds, a sign it reached the proper temperature for adding the spices. I used more chilli and cumin than the original recipe called for so I’ve also added a pinch of raw sugar to compensate. Cumin is wonderfully aromatic, but in larger quantities it is also bitter, the reason why, upon tasting the infusion I decided to balance it a bit. An eighth of a teaspoon was all that was required. Now I realize I could have added a Canadian twist to the dish by using a few drops of maple syrup instead of raw sugar, once the infusion cooled a bit. Oh well… next time!
Preparing the yogurt now. I forgot to mention it’s best to have it at room temperature, otherwise it will suck the heat from the eggs instantly. We don’t want that, OK? Wether we take it out of from the fridge one hour prior cooking or we gently heat it in the microwave, let’s not have it cold. We like garlic in this family. Actually we love it, so I used two large-ish cloves here along with the dill plus seasoning with salt and pepper.
At this point I remembered the Dukkah I made earlier in the year and kept in the fridge ever since. It will go with eggs really well and lend an even more Middle Eastern/ North African vibe to the dish. More details about this nuts/ spices mix here. Speaking of eggs, let’s make them already! We’re hungry!
The recipe calls for poached eggs… well… I was never successful at making them… so should I break out the poacher I use for Eggs Benny? Or perhaps boil them? The recipe will make good use of any sort of eggs with intact, oozy yolks, so fried, sunny side up is how I’m making them.
The moment of truth. Yogurt goes in first and in it we make a nice pocket which receives the eggs. We top it with the butter infusion, dill and dukkah. Toasted ciabatta makes for a perfect vehicle to mop the bowl clean as we ended up doing. This dish made it straight to the top of our breakfast rotation. Not bad for something I didn’t even know it existed a week ago! It is the kind of simple, easy to make, humble, not to mention delicious food which can be easily adapted to your individual liking, truly worth adding to your morning rotation routine.
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