Breakfast for dinner

An:

A while back, Sam emailed me a link to a Buzzfeed article, along with a comment: "We NEED to make this." I followed the link to a listicle about eggs baked in avocado halves. As an avid food-blog reader, the avocado baked egg was nothing new. My thought has always been this: eggs are perfect, avocados are perfect—why mess with two separately great things? After our trip to the beach though, I was craving some lighter fare and this recipe came to mind. We walked over to The Brooklyn Kitchen, a grocery, butcher shop, and kitchenware store all-in-one (plus they do cooking classes!) to pick up two just ripe avocados, fresh eggs and vegetables for a simple salad.  

Sam:

Breakfast for dinner is almost never a bad idea. As An mentioned, after stumbling across this Buzzfeed article about eggs and avocados I really wanted to try this recipe. I love eggs and I love avocado, but I had never had the two merged together into one. There isn't much for me to say here other than I was excited to see how this would turn out!


Baked Eggs in Avocado
A fun recipe to turn two popular ingredients into one tasty entity (adapted from epicurious)
Serves 2 with a simple salad and some extra veggies on the side
Approx. Time: 25-30 minutes (includes time to preheat oven)

Ingredients:
2 ripe, but slightly firm, avocados
4 eggs
salt
pepper
hot sauce, for serving

Special equipment:
Aluminum foil
Baking dish with 2" high sides

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 450F. Set aside a medium-sized round or oval baking dish for placing the avocados in. 
2. Tear two sheets of aluminum foil into square in shapes, and roll them into a sticklike shape. These will help the avocados stay still in the baking dish. 
3. Halve the avocados lengthwise and remove the pit with the blade of your knife. With a small spoon, scoop out some of the avocado flesh, making the original pit-hole big enough to fit the egg (Feel free to eat the scooped out avocado—no waste here!) Set the halves in the baking dish, cut side up, and arrange the foil tubes around the bases of the avocado halves so that they remain level and don't topple over while baking.
4. Crack each egg one at time into a small bowl, spooning one yolk and as much egg white as you can into each avocado half. There may be leftover egg white, but you can discard this or save it for another use. 
5. Season the eggs with salt and pepper to your liking. 
6. Once the oven has finished preheating, carefully slide the dish into the hot oven and bake for 12-14 minutes. The egg white should be just set, but the yolk still molten. Remove dish from oven, allow to cool for 5 minutes and serve with extra salt and pepper and hot sauce. 

Costs:


$ —  $10 or less (per person) - We spent $20 total on this meal which included having left over apple, onion, and lettuce from the salad and two extra eggs.


Verdict

An: We served our avocado baked eggs accompanied by a simple green salad with julienned Granny Smith apple and sliced red onion and a dish of sautéed heirloom tomatoes with fresh basil (from Sam's balcony garden!). I didn't think eggs or avocados could be greater than they already were, but I was pleasantly surprised by this recipe.


Sam: This was a great meal. It was tasty, relatively easy to make, and gave me a new perspective on two ingredients that I really like, eggs and avocado. One thing I noticed was that two of the eggs were slightly overcooked (the yolk was a little hard), and two were cooked perfectly so that the yolk was nice and runny. Make sure that you make the the hole in the avocado a good size so you get enough egg white in there to cover the yolk while baking in the oven. In addition, this is the kind of recipe that can have a bunch of different spins on it which is great, and well documented in many recipes around the web. I'll be doing this again soon and maybe do something crazy like add cheese on top!