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.

Beef tagine with sweet potatoes

It was really a long time I didn't make this dish...years,  in fact I still lived in NY, so at least 8 years ago.
It came out very nice and also my picky eater enjoyed the meat, he didn't touch the sweet potatoes, none of my children seems found of sweet potatoes.

This recipe is slightly adapted from the book of cous cous of Paula Wolfert, it is not just cous cous people, also full of tagine recipes and salads, some very interesting indeed!

How I made it

• 3 slices of paleron (which in American English is the chuck roast, the roast from the neck with a thick gelatine vein going across it). Then I cut every slice in half to get 6 medium slices of meat, about 700 grams total
• 2 tablespoons or a little more of beef tallow
• 1 onion and half diced
• some spices (1/4 tsp of turmenic and paprika and piment d'espelette or cajenne and dried ginger, and a pinch of cumin. 
• some beef stock
• 500 grams sweet potatoes
• one big tomato, peeled seeded and diced, or two smallish 
• some salt and pepper 
• chopped coriander, ops, cilantro

I warmed up my Staub cast iron  skillet and added some tallow, then the meat slices nice and dry and let them color both sides. At this point I added salt, lowered the heat and covered, when the meat started extruding its own juices, I added the onion and the spices and a little bit of beef stock.

 

I covered the meat with some wet parchment paper and the lid and the pan went in the oven a 150 Cerlsius (about 300 F) for a couple hours.

I then added the sweet potatoes sliced ( I recommend to pre-steam the potatoes if you want to speed up the process) and the diced tomatoes, plus a little more salt and let it cook at higher temperature (around 170 C or 350 F) until the potatoes were tender and I was basting the potatoes with the juice from the pan from time to time to prevent drying out.
 Total time, maybe 4 hours. D E L I C I O U S!