Baked Eggs with Yogurt and Chile

I am a recent convert to the baked egg. For years, I slaved away poaching, boiling, and scrambling. Who knew the wonders awaiting me if I just popped those puppies in the oven? Even with this recent knowledge, my collection of baked egg recipes has been relatively small. Once again, it has been the year of the Yotam. Faced with an abundance of eggs and chard, his Turkish-inspired baked eggs convinced me yet again that this may be the best egg preparation ever.

Take a simple recipe of baked eggs and add flavored yogurt and butter to it. Heaven. Absolute heaven. I mean, I'm sure the eggs and chard by themselves would be lovely, the two toppers to this meal sent the experience over the edge. And it's easy. Dead easy. Don't skip on either the yogurt or butter. You'll hate yourself for it later.

Serves 2

Ingredients
3/4 lb (about 14 cups) arugula or chard
2 tbsp olive oil
salt
4 eggs
3/4 cup Greek yogurt
2 garlic cloves, crushd
4 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon plain chile flakes
1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
6 sage leaves, shredded

Method
Preheat the oven to 300 F. Place the arugula/chard and oil in a large pan, add some salt and saute on a medium heat for about 5 minutes or until the arugula wilts and most of the liquid has evaporated.

Transfer to a small ovenproof dish and make four deep indentations in the arugula. Carefully break an egg into each hollow, taking care not to break the yolk. Place in the oven to cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the egg whites have set.

While the eggs are in the oven, mix the yogurt with the garlic and a pinch of salt. Stir well and set aside; do not chill.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Add the chile and paprika and a pinch of salt and fry for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the butter starts to foam and turns a nice golden-red. Add the sage and cook for a few more seconds. Remove from the heat.

Once the eggs are cooked take them out of the oven. Spoon the yogurt over the center and pour the hot chile butter over the yogurt and egg. Serve immediately.

Roasted Butternut Squash with sweet spices, lime and green chile

All things considered, butternut squash is pretty forgiving. You can do almost anything to the humble gourd and it'll stand up and take the flavors without blinking an eye. Over the years I've found thousands of ways to prepare butternut squash (baked, roasted, broiled, grilled, raw, braised...), but props must go once again to Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty for introducing me to yet another butternut squash flavor combination. Limes? Yogurt? Tahini? With squash? Lead on, Yotam.

The preparation of the butternut squash itself is pretty basic, thinly sliced and baked in the oven at high temperatures. What takes this dish into the realm of the unusual is the marinade of cardamom and allspice rubbed on the squash and then the interesting yogurt and tahini dressing the recipe calls for. Oh, and throw in some limes and chiles just for good measure.

But all dubious expectations aside, the dish not only looks pretty but eats pretty as well. Depending on your preferences for sauces, be cautious with the dressing. Although delicious, you don't want it to override the flavors of the lime and squash. That indeed would be a tragedy.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients
2 limes
Sea salt
4 tbsp olive oil
1 medium butternut squash (about 2 lbs)
2 tbsp cardamom pods (or ground cardamom)
1 tsp ground allspice
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
2 1/2 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp lime juice
1 green chile, thinly sliced
2/3 cup cilantro leaves

Method

Preheat oven to 400 F. Trim off the limes' tops and bases using a small sharp knife. Stand each lime on a chopping board and cut down the sides of the fruit, following its natural curves to remove the skin and white pith. Quarter the limes from top to bottom, and cut each quarter into thin slices, about 1/8 inch thick. Place them in a small bowl, sprinkle with a little salt, drizzle with 1 tbsp of the olive oil, stir and set aside. 

Next, cut the squash in half lengthways, scoop out the seeds and discard. Cut each half, top to bottom, into 1/4-inch thick slices and lay them out on a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

If using the cardamom pods, place them in a mortar and pestle and work to get the seeds out of the pods. Discard the pods and work the seeds to a rough powder. Transfer to a small bowl, add the allspice and the remaining 3 tbsp of oi, stir well and brush this mixture over the butternut slices. Sprinkle over a little salt and place in the over for 15 minutes, or until tender when tested with the point of a knife.

Remove from the oven and set aside to cool. Peel off the skin, or leave on if you prefer.

Meanwhile, whisk together the yogurt, tahini, lime juice, 2 tbsp of water, and a pinch of salt. The sauce should be thick but runny enough to pour, add more water if necessary.

To serve, arrange the cooled butternut slices on a serving platter and drizzle with yogurt sauce. Spoon over the lime slices and their juices and scatter the chile slices over the top. Garnish with the cilantro and serve.

Hot Yogurt and Bean Soup

Well, the holidays have come and gone and a new slew of recipe books has come traveling down the pipe line. This year's addition? Plenty by London's favorite vegetarian, Yotam Ottolenghi (try saying that five times fast). As my mother has embraced the joys of the vegetarian lifestyle, this was the perfect recipe book for our newly meat-free family meals. Besides being entirely vegetarian, the book also favors slightly Middle Eastern flavors, often including ingredients you wouldn't necessarily find at your local Safeway (kirmzi biber, anyone?). But if you take Ottolenghi's crazy ingredients with a pinch of salt (and, to his credit, he does often offer easier and more available solutions to the more obscure ingredients), his recipes are usually easy and absolutely always delicious. And more often than not you'll find yourself making dishes you never thought you would.
And loving them.

Enter a hot yogurt soup. Call me small-minded, but I'm not the sort of person who would order anything with this title if I found it on a restaurant menu. Yet the variety of vegetables convinced me that this couldn't be bad. After all, everything else from the book had been delicious. Why stop now?

And indeed, this soup was phenomenal. Thick without being rich and with such a wonderful combination of flavors. Although I'm not always a fan of blended soups, this one won me over completely. You would never know when it's served that it contains both beans and rice. It's wonderfully hearty without being cloying. Half of the taste comes from making your own vegetable broth, which gives the whole soup a wonderful freshness.
Yes, it does take a bit of time. But trust me, for wow factor both on appearance and taste, this one is worth it.

Ottolenghi used fava beans in his soup (although makes the concession that you can use fresh or frozen). But thanks to scarcity of resources, I was forced to work with butter beans (related to the lima bean). And hey, I never noticed the difference. So huzzah to you if you can find the favas, but don't despair if you end up using the humbler lima or butter variety. 

Serves 4

Ingredients
6 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, quartered
4 celery stalks, quartered
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
5 thyme sprigs
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 quarts water
3 1/2 cups shelled fava beans (fresh or frozen, again, here I used butter beans and the soup was just as tasty, it also saves you the time-sapping feat of shelling the fava beans)
1/3 cup long grain rice
salt and white pepper
2 cups Greek yogurt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 egg
3 tbsp roughly chopped dill
3 tbsp roughly chopped chervil
grated zest of 1 lemon

Method

Pour 2 tbsp of the olive oil in a large pot. Heat up the oil and add the onion, celery, and carrot. Saute on medium heat for about 5 minutes; you want to soften up the vegetables without browning them. Next, add the thyme, bay leaves, and parsley and cover with the water. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

While the stock is cooking, proceed to shell the fava beans (if using. If not, huzzah! you have more time on your hands). Bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Throw in the beans and simmer for just 1 minutes. Drain, then refresh the beans under running cold water to stop the cooking. Next, remove the skins by gently pressing with your fingers against the sides of each bean, causing the soft bean to pop out. Discard the skins.

When the stock is ready, pass it through a sieve into a medium saucepan; discard the vegetables and flavorings in the sieve. Add the rice to the stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer, covered for 20 minutes. Now add half the beans and some salt and pepper and use an immersion blender to blitz the soup until it's completely smooth.

Whisk together the yogurt, garlic and egg in a large heatproof bowl. Add a ladleful of hot soup and whisk together. Continue gradually adding the soup until you've mixed in at least half of it. It's important to do this slowly, otherwise the yogurt might split due to the difference in temperatures.

Pour the tempered yogurt into the pan containing the rest of the soup. Place it on medium heat and warm up the soup while stirring constantly. Make sure the soup doesn't boil! Taste and add more salt and pepper if you life.

Ladle the soup into 4 bowls and drop in the remaining beans. Garnish generously with the dill, chervil and lemon zest and drizzle the remaining 4 tbsp of olive oil (this is crucial!!).