Baked Eggs

This is a dish I've always admired, but never attempted.. until NOW (portentous thunderclap).

Seriously, though, I had a little extra time before work this morning, so I took out my cookbook, "Brunch," and flipped open to a recipe I knew required ingredients I already had: eggs, spinach, butter.

I was only making enough for one, so I sort of fudged my way along. I grabbed a huge handful of spinach, which might look like a lot, but ended up being juuust enough. I probably could have even grabbed a bit more. I ignored the book's suggestion to boil the spinach for FOUR minutes? Did I not want any taste or texture left? It could be me, but this seemed an awful lot of time to cook spinach, when the recommendation is to get it to the point where it's still bright green. I cooked it for about a minute, then took it out of the hot water and ran cold water over it to stop the cooking. Once I squeezed the excess water out of the spinach, it wasn't even as big as the egg I was about to crack over it.

I made a bed of spinach at the bottom, put a sliver of butter on top, cracked the egg over it, sprinkled some pepper over it, and added a splash (like not even a full teaspoon) of heavy cream on top. I figured since I salted the water for the spinach already I didn't need to salt the egg, too.

The recipe calls for 15 minutes at 350 degrees, which I say is great if you want a rock-hard-boiled egg. I did not. I made the first one according to specs, and it was too cooked. I put a second one in for about 11 minutes, and it was perfect. Soft but not too runny.

They look pretty fancy-shmancy, don't they? It's a simple dish that's low on effort and high on looks--definitely making an appearance at my next brunch!