Recipe for Eggs Baked on a Bed of Sauteed Mushrooms and Croutons

I'm on the e-mail list for the Splendid Table's Weeknight Kitchen weekly recipe. Most of the time it isn't vegetarian, but the one this week came from my super crush Deborah Madison. I guess she looks really old in person and on TV but I am absolutely in love with the way she looks on the cover of her book Vegetarian Cooking for Everybody.

We made it last night and it turned out most excellent.

Anyway, here's the recipe:
Note: While the oven is heating, brown the bread cubes and sautee the mushrooms. By then the oven will be ready. Don'’t use a convection setting the moving air will blow on the yolks and cook them unevenly.

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 slices bread, cut into small cubes
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/3 cup finely diced shallot or onion
• 6 large brown mushrooms, cremini or portobello, thickly sliced (about 1/2 pound)
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 2 teaspoons chopped marjoram or rosemary
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 generous teaspoons tomato paste
• 3/4 cup red wine, preferably the wine you'll be drinking
• 2 or 4 eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly butter 2 shallow baking dishes and set them on the sheet pan.

2. Melt half the butter in a medium skillet, add the cubed bread, and toss it about the pan. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until it'’s golden and crisp, about 8 to 10 minutes, but not hard. Divide the croutons between the dishes.

3. Heat the oil and remaining butter in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the shallot and cook, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes. Raise the heat, then add the mushrooms, most of the herbs, and a few pinches of salt. Sautee until the mushrooms have started to brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, then add the wine and immediately scrape the pan to release the juicy bits. Lower the heat and simmer until a few tablespoons of juice remain. Season with salt and pepper and divide the mushrooms between the dishes.

4. Break one or two eggs over the croutons and mushrooms and add a pinch of salt and some pepper. Bake until the whites are set, about 15 minutes, and the yolks are as firm as you like. Remove, sprinkle the rest of the herbs over the top, and serve.

Ms. stu and I used marjoram and rosemary and settled on three eggs. I'm not sure why the recipe calls for splitting it into two baking dishes. We put it in one and it turned out just fine. It scoops out on to the plate really easy and doesn't break apart when placed on a plate. We ended up baking it for about fifteen minutes. The egg white mixes in with the mushroom, so it can be difficult to tell when it has set. After fifteen minutes the yolk was still runny---but that's how I love my eggs. If you want a hard yolk I think it may dry out the mushrooms in the amount of time it would take to get the yolk hard, but I dunno.

Most of the ingredients we always have in stock anyway. All we had to pick up were the mushrooms and those cost less than three bucks.