Experiment: Crash Hot Potato, Egg and Cheese Bake

crash hot potatoes
cheese (I used cheddar/mozzarella)
eggs

add in ideas: bacon, peppers, onions, prosciutto, salsa, sausage, garlic, cream cheese, pineapple, spicy shredded chicken,white sauce, ham, jalapenos, cream,
more butter

Preheat the oven to 450. Heavily butter a 7-8 oz ramekin and place a crash hot potato on the bottom. Put as much cheese as you want, plus anything else you're putting in, on top and toss it in the oven to start the cheese melting, maybe 3 minutes or so. Take it out of the oven and let it cool a bit, then put 1-2 eggs on top, depending on the size of the ramekin. Place in the oven in a hot water bath and cook for 10-15 minutes. Serve.

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This will look somewhat familiar to some of you since I basically stole the idea from a post over at Culinary Alchemy. I saw it and thought "That looks awesome. I have fresh eggs. I'm making it tomorrow." And I did, sort of. Something like it anyway. I didn't have cream so I couldn't do that, more's the pity. And I used a different kind of cheese. And instead of sliced potato (Shane either has bad ass knife skills or a mandolin) I used a crash hot potato. So I suppose we could say I adapted it, that sounds better than stealing. Heh.

First, I whipped up some crash hot potatoes. I'll take any excuse to make these bad boys. These were very simply seasoned, just butter on top (instead of olive oil), garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper. Then I buttered the hell out of a 2 cup casserole dish. I was going to use my 7 oz ramekins, but I didn't feel like fiddling with more than one dish. Next came about a potato and a half. If I had been using the ramekins it would have been one per. Then I put a mixture of extra sharp cheddar and a little mozzarella on top and baked it for a couple minutes at 450. Just to get it a bit melty. I let it cool for a couple minutes and then cracked in some eggs. I used three because they were tiny. Three in the palm of my hand tiny. Here I ran into my major problem (other than not having cream). You see, crash hot potatoes aren't very smooth. So the eggs wanted to escape down the sides. I actually lost a yolk to the bottom of the dish. Next time I'm going to be a bit more careful about that, level out the top a bit, make a well or something. But you can't put eggs back in the shell, so I put the whole mess in the oven. Is that a real saying? "Can't put eggs back in the shell"? Seems like I've heard it before...

Anyway, I put it in a hot water bath, although I don't think I did it right, and cooked it for... a while. I kind of lost track of time. I think ten minutes would have been ideal, but it was a bit longer than that. The yolks were a little more done than I wanted, but still creamy. Overall it was awesome. Even if it looked like a chicken, in a Ren & Stimpy kind of way. Next time I'm going to have cream on hand, maybe add some garlic and onion too. And bacon. It's got to have bacon.