Egg en cocotte with sweet potatoes and smoked wild salmon

I have all the intention to make my breakfast more interesting.
So, I think, very slowly, I'll go through my new little French book on cooking eggs.

What did I make this time? An egg en cocotte (shirred egg in English) with sweet potatoes and smoked wild alaskan salmon.
This is surely a keeper recipe. Also my little girl appreciated it! And it if the veggies are cooked the night before it is very easy to put it together in the morning.

This is what I used for one portion:

• one small sweet potato (64 grams after peeling) diced
• 2 tablespoons of minced onion
• 1/2 garlic clove finely minced
• 1 tablespoon of cream
• very little chopped dill
• half a slice of smoked wild salmon cut into strips
• some ghee
• salt and pepper

I steamed the sweet potato dices until almost tender.  Meawhile I softened the onion and garlic in a litte bit of ghee on low heat and then added the sweet potato. Seasoned and finished cooking. Out of the stove I added the salmon strips.
I preheated my oven at 180 C (375 F) and buttered a ramekin. I spooned the potato in the ramekin and made a nest in the middle, carefully cracked my egg there and season lightly. I boiled a pot of water, turned off the stove, lowered the ramekin in the pot (before boiling I checked how much water I needed to go to halfway the ramekin cup) and transferred in the oven. Cooked for 12 minute, until the white was set and the yolk still runny. I heated the cream, with a pinch of salt and drizzle on the egg. Sprinkled with some chopped dill and voila', done.

Poached egg in artichoke bottom

I'd like to treat myself with a nice breakfast but I normally have to deal with a preschooler and a toddler and the most of the times I end up frying a sunny side up egg in ghee or I eat some smoked salmon with a cucumber salad. This morning when my boy left for school with daddy, the girl was still sleeping. Yeah! 
The second thing that normally stops me from a nice breakfast is to be undecided on what to do, time is precious with little children,  and/or I'm missing some ingredients. Well, not this morning...double Yeah!

This recipe is not a new combination...This in particular, slightly adapted, comes from a very cute French book on eggs.

 

 I used

• 1 frozen artichoke bottom (advantages of living in France)
• 1 vitamin C tablet (or lemon juice)
• 1 egg left at room temperature
• a drop of white vinegar
• some veal stock reduction
• a tablespoon or so of pouring cream
• a teaspoon of grainy mustard
• few strips of Serrano ham
• thyme sprig for decoration 
• salt 

It is not difficult if you know what you are doing an you have a little bit of planning. If you don't have access to frozen artichokes bottoms, which are very handy, you can use a fresh one. On internet you can find tons of tutorial on cleaning artichokes. Normally artichokes discolor quickly, one way to prevent it it's cooking them with a little bit of lemon juice. An alternative should be to use some vitamin C or ascorbic acid. I crashed a vit. C pill and add to the boiling water and simmer the artichoke bottom until tender. Check with the tip of a knife. You can cool in ice water if you want to stop the cooking.

Then, second step, I poached the egg. I left it out of the fridge overnight. I brought a pot of water to boil, added a splash of white vinegar and cracked my egg into a ramekin. I stirrred the water to create a vortex, with  the ramekin very close to the simmering water I  dropped carefully the egg in the water and stirred around a bit to envelope the yolk with the white. 3 minutes cooking and I transferred the egg in ice water, trimmed the bits of white hanging and put on the side.

I've alway some veal bones reduction in the freezer. When you make a veal bone broth reduce it down to a syrupy consistency and let in cool quickly, it will gel and you can cut in cubes to freeze and use that way to finish up a dish. I'm going to write a detailed post about this.

Meanwhile, if you don't have any handy, you can reduce some other stock. So, I defrosted some of my veal glaze and added some cream, reduced a touch more, added some salt, a drop of lemon for acidity and out of the stove some grainy mustard.
I boiled again some salted water to warm up my artichoke and poached egg.

Ah, then, while I did that in a little saute' pan with just a teaspoon of ghee I crisped up some Serrano ham.

Time to plate!
Artichoke bottom, trimmed poached eggs, a stip or two of Serrano and your creamy reduction on the side.

And then I had a big smile on my face for a while after this nice breakfast!