Baked Eggs

Happy Easter. For me, Easter is about celebrating with food and a bit of shmaltz. I love a chocolate egg or two and an silly egg hunt around the apartment. So, this Easter G decided to make a Bo Ssam. It was truly wonderful and weird. Admittedly, around holiday dinner times, I get very particular about whatever I might think is traditional and I do get nostalgic for foods I have had throughout my life. So, I thought we should have a traditional old ham, I think a gammon here in the UK. I haven't had a ham in at least 5 years and here the tradition is lamb or beef, I think. Neither of us like lamb and whatever beef. So, G said we might slow cook a joint of pork and have bo ssam served with ginger scallion sauce, a pickled fennel relish and some kimchee wrapped in lettuce leaves and eaten in a messy and fun style. What a good idea.

Our Easter table.

I also wanted to add a couple of more traditional elements but with a twist. Mashed sweet potatoes and asparagus. I love making these mashed sweet potatoes with butter and white miso. The miso gives a lovely salty snap to the sweetness of the vegetable and the butter is, the butter. I thought I would dress the asparagus a bit too and looked up a recipe with pancetta, pine nuts, leeks, and some orange zest. If I ever made this again, I would leave out the zest and maybe the leeks. So, to the lady who put this recipe online and called it the 'best asparagus ever' or something like that. I give you an eternal raspberry of the tongue variety. I admit, I may have adjusted some quantities for our small amount of asparagus but, not good stuff.

The bo ssam though, that was the bomb. Take your freshly shucked oyster and lay atop your slow cooked pork, layer on your toppings, a bit of each and wrap and munch away. A truly great experience for your mouth. Hearing about it does not do it any justice, though. It made me wince to think about trying. Now, I may dream about it.

On Easter morning, I like to make a special holiday breakfast but, the family tradition of fried dough is really not very good for us. I decided to make a baked egg sort of dish with tomato, goat cheese, fresh spinach, shallot, pancetta and eggs.

My first baked egg casserole.

The night before we had also mugged a couple of Easter bunnies and squoze chocolate eggs out of their baskets. That was the fun part. So G asked what we were going to do with them as we ran down the trail away from the dazed rabbits and I said 'Hide them, of course'. So he did hide them. All of them. In the plastic bag. In the oven. I woke up and preheated it to bake my eggs and that is what happened.

Our chocolate eggs!

All of the larger ones deflated. The smaller ones just got soft and stuck together. I did hide some of the survivors when G went to take out the recycling. He had fun finding them and eating them immediately. I think he got a little sick on chocolate.