Kerry Webb Asks ...
Satyam Replies
Kerry's Cobble
Astrid Bear's Stove top Recipe
Huevos a la Flamenca - Patrick Walsh
Vegetarian Eggs and Chorizo, also known as Sweet Peppers and Eggs - John Gosden
Treason Eggs - Randal Allred
Meatless Eggs and Chorizo - Katherine Sherman-Hoehn
Kerry Webb Asks ...
A reference to Madrileños reminded me that I had a version of baked eggs a couple of months ago called Huevos Madrileños - made with a medium-strength salsa-type sauce, chorizos and black pudding.
Is that a concoction, or is the dish a real one from Madrid?
Satyam Replies
I found something as you describe a couple of times in Madrid, but it wasn't called that way, it was just 'huevos con chorizo' that is, 'eggs and sausage', which is quite normal, since they don't call hamburgers hamburgers in Hamburg nor Danish pastries Danish in Denmark.
I don't remember blood sausage in it, but it wouldn't be a far off variation to it. One of the two I tried had the egg fried sunny side up and then put to float on top of the chorizos in the sauce instead of being cooked in the sauce. The other I would think had the chorizo and sauce served really hot and the raw egg thrown in so it cooked in the hot sauce, I think it is what you call 'poached'.
No baking was involved in what I had. What I got served both times was poured from a simmering big pot to the ramekin and in one the raw egg poured in, in the other, the egg fried apart and placed on top. No cheese in either case. The yolk running in both cases. Lots of bread to sink through the yolk and tomato sauce.
It must be typical of that region since I haven't found them in Catalonia, and the ingredients also seem to be right for Castilla.
The spicy flavour in the sauce, though, probably comes from paprika, not from chile as in salsa. It was winter, but I didn't notice while the effect lasted.
Kerry's Cobble
I couldn't find a recipe so I cobbled one together:
Take a ramekin (1 cup capacity) and put 1 tablespoon of melted butter in it. Add a few pieces of coarsely chopped chorizo and/or black pudding. Add half a cup of sauce (I've used medium taco sauce or pasta sauce).
Add one or two eggs. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Cook in 450 F oven for five minutes. Cover eggs with a tablespoon of shredded cheddar cheese. Cook for another five minutes.
Eat while it's hot.
Astrid Bear's Stove top Recipe
I just did a variation of this, stove-top. Heat salsa in small frying pan, crack in two eggs, cover till eggs are mostly done, add cheese and cover till cheese is melted. Yum!
This seems to be a variation of Uova in Purgatorio, ("Eggs in Purgatory") which is an Italian dish. The sauce is tomato puree, garlic olive oil, and fresh basil, with Parmesan on top.
And the old Joy of Cooking has "Huevos Rancheros or Cowboy Eggs", which they say is a traditional Spanish and Latin American dish. The sauce is tomatoes, onion, green pepper, garlic, chile powder, cumin, and oregano. Pour sauce over poached eggs or bake them in the sauce.
The Huevos Rancheros found in Mexican restaurants in the US is typically on a flat tortilla, then a bed of refried beans, eggs over easy, and the sauce poured over.
So I think we can say there is something of the like in many countries speaking the Romance languages -- but is it especially associated with Madrid? I guess that's the black pudding/chorizo version.
Huevos a la Flamenca - Patrick Walsh
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
4 tablespoons olive oil
100g sliced chorizo (or smoked bacon or even prawns)
2 red or green peppers, chopped
350g ripe tomatoes, skinned and seedless
100g peas
100g French beans, snapped
8 large eggs
1-2 tablespoons fino or amontillado sherry
salt
pinch of cayenne pepper
Heat the oven to 180 Cel (350F) and warm a shallow baking dish (or several ramekins). Heat the oil in the frying pan and soften the onion slowly. Add the garlic and push all to the side. Fry the sausage until coloured and then remove it. Add the peppers and chopped tomato and cook and reduce stirring occasionally. Cook the beans and peas and add them too. Transfer all to the baking dish and distribute the meat evenly. Swirl the eggs together with a fork, but do not overmix, and season well with salt and cayenne pepper. Pour mixture over the meat and veggies and bake in oven for about 15 minutes until eggs are cooked.
Courtesy of a wonderful book some friends managed to smuggle out of Spain. Although it is in English, and so it makes me think otherwise. I can certainly vouch for the wonderful taste.
Vegetarian Eggs and Chorizo, also known as Sweet Peppers and Eggs - John Gosden
This is not unlike a vegetarian recipe I found in a magazine many years ago:
Sweet Peppers and Eggs
Ingredients :
3 sweet peppers (red, yellow and green or orange)
1 onion, chopped
Small tin tomatoes*
Butter
Mixed herbs
Sugar, salt and pepper
2 eggs
Method : Sweat onions gently in butter. Halve peppers, remove seeds and put (skin up) under very hot grill. When skin blackens, remove, cool and peel. Chop into smallish pieces and add to onions. Continue cooking till both onions and peppers are softened. Add tomatoes and mixed herbs, plus salt, sugar and pepper to taste. When heated through, transfer to oven-proof dish, make two hollows in surface, break eggs into hollows and transfer dish to oven at 180*C (350*F). When eggs thoroughly cooked (about 10 min) serve.
*Small tin tomatoes: It's the one about 250 g (half a pound?). What I call a large can is about 500+ g, and then there is the tiny size, no use to man or beast. Mind you, if you can get really good flavoursome fresh tomatoes (Brandywine or something of the sort) use instead - just blanch and peel before chopping.
Treason Eggs - Randal Allred
The first time I had chorizo and eggs, I had never heard of the dish. I was a Boy Scout, camping in the middle of the Mohave Desert in the winter. On a particularly frigid and windy morning, my patrol leader (a bluff lad of enviable swagger and nonchalance named Kip) announced we were having "Trees on Eggs" for breakfast. After an awkward silence and blank expressions from our blue-nosed faces, he repeated it. It then sounded like "Treason Eggs," which didn't sound much better. Still no sign of gratitude or enthusiasm from us. So, muttering something about wimps and squirrels, he put a pan on the wood fire, and soon had a disreputable mess of sausage and scrambled eggs that smelled like heaven, hot and hot, which he doled out in great lumps on our mess kit plates. Great stuff to warm you up on a chilly morning in the high desert. I do not know the difference between Mexican chorizo and Spanish, but the spirit is the same, I am sure.
I asked Kip what was in the chorizo, and he said, "Don't ask."
Meatless Eggs and Chorizo - Katherine Sherman-Hoehn
In one of those odd coincidences, there I was at lunch yesterday, after catching up on two days of Gunroom mail, including this description, and complaining to my co-worker that I was all out of staples with which to make a vegetarian meal for that evening (lots of meat in my freezer right now, though). She suggested Shopshuka (spelled phonetically), a dish her Israeli mother served, and began to describe it: "you cook some eggs in a tomato sauce made with onions, cumin, garlic, hot sauce...". "Gee," I thought to myself, "where have I heard this recipe before?" For the record: the eggs are poached in the sauce, no baking, no chorizo (gee!) or sephardic chorizo-equivalent. The above-mentioned spices and vegetable are the only ones she said were absolutely necessary for the dish. So, I thought I'd try it (sans meat-- and all we had for sausage was andouille, anyway) and fiddled around with a kind of Mexican-meets-Middle Eastern sauce... and voila! And it was, indeed, GOOD. Just one of those strange coincidences... or maybe the long arm of fate....
Which it's the Patrick O'Brian list of the world!