Sprout & Pea

I had a pretty ridicu­lous amount of goat cheese left over from a recent sup­per club din­ner. Some­times I over esti­mate to be safe. This time, I really over­es­ti­mated. So, when some friends invited me to brunch on Sat­ur­day, I decided (know­ing brunch was also in the cards for Sun­day) that I would save some money, take advan­tage of the copi­ous amounts of my favorite cheese in the refrig­er­a­tor, and make myself an impromptu breakfast.

I woke up crav­ing eggs, which soon led to me day­dream­ing about a dish that I once had in Israel– eggs baked in tomato sauce, also known as shak­shuka. That’s when the thought of adding goat cheese to this meal made me start to sali­vate. Still, I wanted to add some­thing else into the mix so that it wasn’t just creamy tomato sauce and eggs. After rum­mag­ing through my pantry, I dis­cov­ered a half used bag of lentils and I knew my meal was com­plete! So, I cooked up the lentils, sauteed them with some shal­lots, gar­lic and tomato sauce and placed it all in the bot­tom of my mini Le Creuset. I scooped out a lit­tle hole for the goat cheese, topped it with an egg, and of course added some more goat cheese and tossed it all into the oven to bake. When it emerged, I was mostly excited that I had cooked the egg to per­fec­tion — just runny enough. After attempt­ing to get this meal to look pretty on cam­era, and let­ting it cool quite a bit, I finally took a bite and the fla­vors on my taste buds sur­passed what I had imag­ined when I first woke up. Les­son learned: when you have an ample sup­ply of deli­cious ingre­di­ents in your house, save some money, skip brunch, and maybe even invite your friends over for a home­made break­fast. Here’s how to make it…

1/​2 cup lentils
2 cups veg­etable broth
1 shal­lot chopped
1 clove of gar­lic chopped
1 tbs extra vir­gin olive oil
1/​3 cup tomato sauce
1/​3 cup tomato paste
1/​2 cup goat cheese
Salt and pep­per to taste

Bring veg­etable broth to a boil and add lentils. Cook for 5 min­utes, remove from heat, cover and let sit for 2 min­utes. While the lentils are cook­ing, sauté the shal­lots and gar­lic until shal­lots are translu­cent. Add tomato sauce and paste. When lentils are done, drain extra liq­uid and add lentils to pan with tomato sauce, gar­lic and shal­lots. Sea­son with salt and pep­per and mix together over medium-​​high heat for a few min­utes. Trans­fer mix­ture to ramekin or other small bak­ing dish. Cre­ate hole in cen­ter of mix­ture and fill with goat cheese 1/​2 way. Crack egg on top and sprin­kle crum­bled goat cheese around the egg on top of mix­ture. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 min­utes or until egg is cooked but still runny.