Ingredients
- About 1-inch of whole slab bacon, cut into batons
- 2 fat leeks, white parts sliced into rounds (discard tough green leaves or use for stock) and rinsed well
- 1-2 potatoes, cut into small 1/4-inch cubes
- A few sprigs of fresh thyme (1/2 tsp), or about 1/8 tsp dried thyme, or to your taste
- 5 eggs
- Heavy cream
- Unsalted butter
- Salt, pepper
Preparation
Step 1
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Put the chopped potatoes with a little water (enough to cover the bottom but not the tops of potatoes) into a small saucepan. Boil for 5 minutes. Drain potatoes from any remaining water.
Sautee the bacon batons in a large pan (preferably nonstick), until crisp; rendering the fat. Pour off most of the fat from the pan, reserve.
Add the leek rounds to the remaining bacon fat, sautee for a few minutes until soft, adding some of the reserved bacon fat if desired. Add in the thyme and potatoes and stir to mix. Leave in the pan for a couple of minutes undisturbed to help caramelisation. When you see beautiful brown bits forming on the leeks and potatoes, add in the bacon; stir. When the hash is to your liking (taste and add salt and pepper), remove from heat.
Plating
I used two 1/2-quart mini oval gratin dishes and one 4.5-oz. white ramekin for the hash. The grain dishes got 2 eggs each; the ramekin only one. Dot the bottom of the dish/ ramekin with small pats of butter. Add in the hash. Create a small indentation in the hash and break an egg over that indentation so that the yolk can nestle snugly into the well. If you don't make this indentation, the yolk will slide to the edge of the pan and will eventually get overcooked. I made the mistake with the first dish - see photo above - it's the one in the lower right corner. The other dish with eggs fared better, but one yolk was at a higher elevation than the other and also got overcooked. Pour over 3-4 Tablespoons of cream over the eggs and hash. Reginald's recipe also calls for dotting the hash and egg whites with bits of butter; I omitted this step.
Place your egg dishes into the oven and cook from 15-30 minutes - your mileage may vary depending on your oven. I initially set the timer for 15 minutes, but the egg whites were still translucent and runny after that time. Obviously, the goal is to reach that beautiful medium where the egg whites are set but the yolks are still runny... perhaps I should have dotted with butter as the original recipe directed.