I think I’ve found my favorite egg recipe yet and I am going to share it with you just in time for the holidays.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting with homemade pastries. I made some homemade puff pastry–more on that later–and now all I do every day is think up all the different ways I can prepare puff pastry. (Jim and I are developing a dessert I have proudly dubbed the cozy puff. It’s chocolate and pastry cream sandwiched between two discs of puff pastry, but it’s still in the beta phase, so stay tuned!)
I don’t think I’ve come across a breakfast dish like this before. Sure, there are breakfast pizzas, but they don’t use puff pastry, they use a heavier, yeasty dough. This recipe is like having creamy eggs laying on a flat bed of thin, buttery sheets of croissant.
I will warn you, it’s kind of a pain in the butt to make this dish, so I’d save it for a special holiday breakfast or for sharing with someone who will appreciate the work it takes to make it. BUT IT’S SO TASTY. Maybe just make it for yourself and don’t share it with anyone.
If you decide to make your own puff pastry (which I don’t necessarily recommend because it is an extra layer of work and waiting and a lot can go wrong) my advice to you is this: use regular butter, not the fancy stuff. The ideal puff pastry is flakey and has hundreds of thin layers of dough stacked on top of each other. It gets those hundreds of layers from the water in butter boiling in the oven and producing steam, which is a gas and lifts the dough as it evaporates into thin layers. (I read in a book that it’s 740 layers, but I have no idea how accurate that is or who would bother counting the layers in puff pastry.) The fancy butter has a much higher fat content and not as much water, but you need that water to lift the dough layers! Okay. End rant.
Well, one more thing. If you make your own puff pastry, freeze your butter. Okay, I’m done. Now, back to the recipe…
I would also like to briefly plug for breakfast salads. I don’t know why we have to box salads in as only a lunch or dinner item. I love greens any time of day. The arugula here has a spicy bitterness that nicely contrasts the creamy savoriness of the egg bake. A simple lemon vinaigrette does the trick.
I have trouble ending breakfast without some sort of sweet and sour flavor. I am a sucker for juices, but I know they’re chock-full of sugar, so regular orange slices hit the spot for me. It fully fleshes out the flavor wheel for this dish, too. Sweet, sour, salty, savory, bitter, spicy. Check!
I would highly recommend this for a Christmas brunch…nudge, nudge. Plus, it has broccoli in it! It’s healthy!
Flattened Egg Bake Recipe
Ingredients
1 sheet puff pastry
1 tbsp butter
1 leek
1 shallot
6 cloves garlic
1/8-1/4 tsp sea salt
8 oz frozen broccoli (1 cup)
8 oz frozen spinach (1 cup)
6 eggs plus 2 egg whites
3 tbsp heavy whipping cream
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
2 tbsp Parmesan cheese
Serves 8
275 calories per serving
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease a jelly roll pan with butter or a cooking spray.
2. Roll out the puff pastry with a floured rolling pin on a floured surface so it is about the same size as the jelly roll pan. Then transfer puff pastry to jelly roll pan. Set aside.
3. Chop leek and shallot and mince garlic. Sautee in a pan on medium heat with butter. Sprinkle with between 1/8 – 1/4 tsp sea salt. Continue sauteeing until garlic is golden. When done, remove from heat and spread over puff pastry.
4. Boil salted water in a medium, uncovered pot. Add broccoli and spinach, and cook for 3-5 minutes so that they are cooked but not overdone. Drain and shock with ice water. (Squeeze the water out of the spinach so your pastry doesn’t get soggy.) Arrange the broccoli and spinach over the puff pastry.
5. Whisk together eggs, egg whites, whipping cream, and 1/2 tsp sea salt. Pour over the puff pastry.
6. Evenly sprinkle the feta and parmesan cheese over the egg mixture and greens.
7. Bake for 30 minutes. Cut into large squares and serve with a bright arugula salad and citrus!