Not gonna lie, I got a little side tracked in my Good Eats watching and ended up watching Bon Appetit youtube videos featuring my favorite test kitchen chef, Brad Leone. Brad does a series for youtube called It’s Alive mostly featuring fermented dishes and ingredients like kombucha and miso but he get’s a little out of the box sometimes too. I love the silly sounds and fun graphics that come along with his videos and just feel happy watching him. He did a little three episode series where he went to the woods and ‘camped’ and cooked food including some breakfast in a cast iron skillet. I’m highly susceptible to food in videos and shows and want to eat everything I see. Which is pretty dangerous seeing that I spend most of my days watching food related shows.. very curious.
In any case, I watched Brad crack these eggs into a great pan of veggies and decided I had to go home and make my own cast iron skillet of hash. This is not the first time I’ve seen a cast iron skillet with beautiful yolk-y eggs on top so I’m not new to this dish but this is the first time I’m taking notes so here we go.
I of course, love potatoes - so I started my skillet off on the stove with a little oil and a sliced potato base. I still like a potato-y, starchy feel to my potatoes so I don’t tend to like a traditional grated hash as much so something sliced or cubed works better for me. I let it go on low so it would cook through better and give it time to get a little brown on the bottom while I figured out what else I was going to do. I ended up mixing in some of my left over acorn squash and stuffing because this skillet hash tends to be great ‘refrigerator velcro’ as Alton Brown would say. This is just that this is a great place for leftovers to go to give them a second life before they have to get thrown out after sitting in your fridge dreaming of getting eat. I decided to search this recipe on the Bon Appetit website and found their Portuguese Baked Eggs and got some good guidelines for oven temps and times and set the oven to 400F.
Once everything was warmed through, I cracked my eggs on top and baked it in the oven. Bon App suggested a baking time of 15-18mins and I went for the lighter end of that spectrum and went for 15mins myself. The whole dish looked so good and I took Brad’s tip from one of his videos to drizzle olive oil around the edge of the pan so when it cooks the edge is crisp and lifts off the pan and this worked perfectly. I timed this really well and got some solid golden hour light in my apartment as I pulled this out of the oven so of course I ran around the place with a hot skillet trying to get a shot before the sun set even more and I missed out. Overall, this was great. My squash was a good idea and sweetened up the eggs and potatoes really nicely but the potatoes added a nice mellow taste to the acorn squash that I appreciated. Unfortunately my eggs, while looking perfect, were completely cooked through and not runny at all. Highly disappointed but I still ate the whole thing so it wasn’t really bad. I’m still craving that runny yolk so hopefully I can get it right next time. That’s the note boys and girls (and future Emily - reading this to remember what I did) - bake for less time, 5-10mins maybe? Just enough to let the whites set and for everything else to be warmed and ready to eat.