Baked Eggs with Kale

Sometimes, when the temperature is icy and night so early, you need a bit of comfort food.

I had a strong, strong craving for baked eggs, that still creamy white with an unctuous yolk. Normally I’d just defrost a bit of spinach, add a pinch of nutmeg and S&P, make a hole and put in an egg, sprinkling some cheese and maybe a dash of tabasco before putting it in the oven for 15 minutes. Somehow this seems ok for a solo lunch but not nearly enough for a supper with Mr UrbanFoodie. Funny how you’ll cook yourself something you’d never offer to another…

I found this recipe in the Guardian, good old Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall comes up trumps again, the man is a natural foodie, so in love with food its infectious. It’s basically a cheesy white sauce with kale to surround the eggs, I added some left over chorizo and a leek that was on its last legs, so it is easily customisable to taste/what’s going a little curly in the fridge.

Serve with bread to mop up with and prepare for some serious sofa time, you’ll be so warmly blanketed.

Ingredients
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe, I have only tweaked it a little…

1 small onion
2 bay leaves
nutmeg
350ml milk
30g butter
30g flour
Big bunch kale (at least half a collander full)
125g cheddar / mix of cheese
4 very fresh eggs

1 Peel and cut onion in half, add with bay leaves and nutmeg to milk in a pan, bring to boil, cover and take off heat to infuse for 20 mins
2 Grate cheese, put oven on to 180 C
3 Melt butter and add flour, cook the roux for a few mins until it looks like wet sand, add in the (strained) milk bit by bit - don’t worry if it lumps just stir them in, they will go
4 When white sauce is undulating (making thick waves with your wooden spoon) add 3/4 of the cheese remove from heat and cover with clingfilm to stop a skin forming, set aside
5 Wash and chop kale, you can either steam for 3-4 minutes or sautee, covered for 2-3 minutes. I did the latter as I already had the leek and chorizo sauteeing in a pan
6 Mix the kale into the cheese sauce and pour into an ovenproof dish, make 4 holes for the eggs. This can be a bit like working with wet sand so do them one by one if you need to
7 Add eggs, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top and pop in oven for 15-20 mins. Start checking eggs at 10 mins, the dish is done when they are