Broder Cafe is a favorite Portland spot. Known for niche Nordic cuisine, creative breakfast cocktails, and long waits that find clientele hanging out on the sidewalk out front with steaming mugs of coffee, it’s a pretty quintessential Rose City brunch experience. My go-to dish there: Lost Eggs.
Not knowing when I’ll be able to a) travel again b) travel to Portland c) go to Broder, and not finding a decent copy cat recipe of this dish online, I decided to find these Lost Eggs in my own kitchen. Here’s what I did:
Ingredients:
- 1 egg
- Some cream
- A couple handfuls of spinach
- Ham lunch meat (or something nicer, but hey, this is quarantine cooking so we work with what we have!)
- Dried parsley
- Paprika
- Olive oil
- Bread crumbs or panko
- Grated parmesan
- Green onion
Directions:
Keep in mind I was completely winging it, and I would make some adjustments next time, which I’ll note here.
- Put a splash of olive oil in a nonstick pan and let it heat up over medium heat.
- Dice up a couple pieces of thin ham lunch meat, add to pan, let it cook a few minutes until it starts to pucker up and change color and get a little crisp.
- Add two handfuls of fresh spinach and toss and turn until the spinach wilts.
- Add a generous splash of cream. The spinach should be coated. In hindsight I think I used a tad bit too much, so I would say add a tablespoon at a time so you don’t overdo it.
- Add a couple dashes of paprika, a pinch of salt, pepper, and a dash of parsley flakes.
- Cook so that the cream is slightly bubbling, and let it cook down.
- Transfer spinach mix to an individual meal-size, oven-safe baking dish. I used a Le Creuset dish and I sprayed it with canola oil first.
- Crack an egg into a ramekin or small bowl. You might be tempted to crack it straight on to the spinach mix and sure, if you’re a risk taker, you can roll like that. But I always use an interim transfer dish to be safe because egg shells are lame.
- Use a spoon to make an indent in the center of the spinach mixture. Pour the egg from the ramekin into said indent.
- Bake at 400 for 15 minutes or until the egg white has set. Note: I took it out after 15 and it didn’t seem the white had set so I gave it 5 more, and I cooked it too long for my liking. I also didn’t think through the broiling step (see steps 11-12). So next time I would pull it at 15.
- Add one more sliced up piece of ham to the top, sprinkle with break crumbs, add parmesan.
- Broil for 3 minutes or until top is crunchy and toasted.
If you succeed, here is what you’ll get: a rich, creamy sauce with that earthy spinach, sweet and savory bits of chewy ham, that gooey velvet egg with a slightly runny yolk, and that perfect salty crunch from the toasted bread and cheese bits on top. So many great flavors, textures and colors here!
When you eat this at Broder, they serve it in a small cast iron pan with two eggs (instead of my one) and thick-cut toast for dipping. The toast would be a nice touch. A mimosa would have been divine too.
This is definitely not an every day or even every week or every month dish — the cream puts it in the “treat” category for sure. But dang it made for a delicious morning.
Happy cooking!
