Baked Eggs with Lightly Spiced Tomato Jam
Morita chiles are red, fully mature Chipotles. This gives them a unique, medium – hot smokey flavor which is popular in many Southwestern dishes. These can be added to sauces (including Mole) to add smokey flavor and maintain the red color of the sauces. These peppers are about 2-4 inches in length, 1 inch in width, and have a deep brick reddish brown color. The word Chipotle translated to smoked chile. Consider the Chipotle a 6.5 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the hottest). Scoville heat units 7,000-25,000.
Suggested Use:
Use Morita in enchilada sauces, chili, stews, barbecue ribs, and corn bread. Their smoky quality combines well with poultry, meats and fall squash.
Ingredients:
For the baked eggs:
4 medium to large free range eggs
1 banana shallot, finely sliced
2-3 streaky bacon rashers (substitute with toasted bread crumbs if making for vegetarian)
2 tbsp creme fraiche or natural yogurt
handful of chopped dill
some butter
some rapeseed oil
salt and pepper
For the tomato jam:
32 oz/ 940g mixed tomatoes, coarsely chopped
5.5 oz/160g red peppers, roughly chopped
1.7 oz/50g mixed chilli, deseeded and roughly chopped
.88 oz/ 25g ginger, roughly chopped
1 chipotle chile, cut into small flakes
10.5 oz/300g jam sugar
1.7 oz/ 50ml balsamic vinegar
1 1/2tsp cumin seed
10 cloves
1tsp cinnamon
good handful of fresh thyme
1tsp malden salt
Instructions:
Serves 2
This recipe will make about 1 pint of tomato jam. Having said that, this relies heavily on the ripeness of the tomatoes you’re using and the thickness of the final jam. There aren’t any rules as such on how thick it should be. Just go with however you like it. If you make it slightly loose, it will be more like a pourable posh tomato ketchup. I like mine quite thick and sticky, so I can smother generously over the cracker with some mature cheddar. This jam is amazing with bacon sandwich. It goes really well with grilled portobello mushrooms stuffed with some fried garlic, onion and chilli flakes, and a spoonful of jam in the middle with a good helping of grated cheese. It is also brilliant quick marinade to roast the jointed chicken with extra squeeze of lemon and crushed garlic.
Making the tomato jam is very simple, once you have all ingredients ready. I use lots of different types of tomatoes- half of the quantity is ripe vine tomatoes and the other half is made up with plum and cherry tomatoes.
Again with chile, use different strength. I use some very hot ones like bird eye chilli and scotch bonnet, mixed with some very mild ones.
Using your food processor, blitz red peppers, chilli and ginger into fine flecks. They should have paste consistency with bits.
Grind all spices. Put all ingredients into large sauce pan, bring to boil, then simmer over low heat for about an hour and half. Make sure to stir every so often to prevent the jam from sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning. When ready, cool them down ever so slightly and decant them into the sterilised jam jars. This will last you about a week in the fridge. However, if you use the canning methods to preserve the jars, it will keep up to a year stored in a dark and cool place.
That settled, lets move on to bake some eggs. Start by gently frying the shallots in some oil over medium heat for 5-10mins until golden and slightly crisped up around the edges. Set aside.
Grill or fry the bacon rashers until very crisp. Break them into fine crumbs and set aside.
Lightly butter your choice of baking dishes. Sprinkle some fried shallots into the individual dish, reserving some for the top. Spoon in the 1tbsp creme fraiche into the dish, crack 2 eggs each per person, rest of the shallots, sprinkle chopped dill and season well with pinch of flaky malden salt and lots of cracked black pepper. Place the ramekins into the large baking tray and fill the tray with hot water only half way up to the outside of ramekins. Bake them for around 12mins or until eggs are set to your liking at 180º.
When ready, take them out carefully and garnish it with bacon crumbs. Serve it with toasted sourdough- it’s delish!
From babaganuj.blogspot.co.uk