Easter Brunch: Baked Eggs with Gruyere
Whoever came up with brunch is a genius. Sure, hygiene it just a late breakfast, sickness but it’s a late breakfast with Mimosas. And if you’re at my house, website it’s a late breakfast with Guamosas. That’s not a typo or some weird baby talk. Guamosas are Mimosas made with guava juice instead of orange juice and they are absolutely amazing. Nothing says celebration on a Sunday quite like a Guamosa. If you can get your hands on some guava juice (or guava nectar), I highly recommend you make some as soon as possible. And if you share them with friends, they’ll love you forever.
Now, onto the more sensible and commonplace part of brunch – eggs. If you’ve ever made brunch for a crowd, you know how impossible it is to get the eggs just right. Everyone’s crowding around drinking Guamosas while you tend to a pan of eggs, making sure not to overcook them. I’d rather be drinking Guamosas than standing in the kitchen tending to a skillet, so I usually make a strata, which is basically a very eggy bread pudding with cheese on top. Everyone loves it and your oven does all the tending while you socialize. The only thing missing for me is a beautiful soft yolk. I do like my drippy, glistening yolk. So I tried combining the awesomeness of a poached egg with the easiness of a strata in these baked eggs.
This is experimentation gone right. These little ramekins are pure delicious brunch-iness. Bread, heirloom tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, spicy Spanish chorizo (or ham or bacon or sausage), a little cream, a cracked egg and a generous pile of Gruyere. The tomatoes and cream soak the bread and make it the perfectly creamy, tangy base for chorizo and drippy yellow yolk. And the cheese is browned and melted and there’s nothing better than that.
These will definitely be making an appearance at Easter Brunch on Sunday and they just might outshine the Guamosas!