Baked Eggs with Pancetta, Goat Cheese, Thyme & Brand New Cocottes!

If there truly is a shadowy government agency tapping phones and keeping track of everyone’s movements, they grew bored of collecting mine and Jane’s data a long time ago.  Somewhere there’s a file folder on some government agent’s desk with our names on it, and a list of two places, Central Market and Sur La Table.  We seem to go there every weekend.  One stop for supplies at Sur La Table tends to lead to a stop for groceries at Central Market, or vice versa.  It’s a strange dance and sometimes the music just changes on you.

The Saturday before Labor Day was somewhat of a free day for a change, so we wanted to just relax and possibly add to our list of locations in the government file.  Despite going to brunch and the movies, we still managed to find ourselves in the weekend chaos of Sur La Table and now we’re better for it.

It’s always best to make the clearance section the first area you browse at Sur La Table.  There’s all sorts of gems to be found amongst the waffle cone makers and madeleine pans, and on this day we found the crown jewels.  Just off to the side were a set of Le Creuset Cocottes in faded yellow, priced ridiculously low.  We’ve been wanting a set or two for some time now and today was our lucky day.  We knew we had to buy them immediately.

The options for what could be made with them seemed limitless.  We could go sweet, savory, or even soufflé.  What we ended up making was a fast and delicious breakfast for a busy Labor Day weekend of cooking.  Good thing we had leftover pancetta.

Baked eggs could not have been more quick and easy.  Two eggs per dish, then throw whatever else you would like in with them.  That’s it!  Oh yeah, turn on the oven and set the timer kind of stuff too.  We settled on scraps we had left over from other meals we were cooking that weekend (cheesecake, succotash, and pork chops – posts to follow!).  Shallots, cherry tomatoes, fresh thyme, and diced pancetta all factored in perfectly. Cooking time was roughly about 15 minutes, prep time was maybe 15 minutes all in all.  It was quite fun working around the egg yolks to create the perfect balance.

The recipe in full is below, but this is so simple that you won’t even need it, and we suggest trying any number of your favorite additions.  Send us photos even, we’d love to see your ideas!  This will surely be a staple in the Thyme & Temp kitchen, especially when we need something fast and entirely delicious.