Eggs in a basket are a treat. The easiest way to make the necessary holes in your sliced bread is with a round pastry cutter – or a heart-shaped one for fun. Break the eggs into their bread ‘baskets’, then fry up their “hats” to go alongside. To make this a grownup rather than a nursery dinner, serve with lemon-and-paprika-spiked chard, or spinach or kale, if that’s what you have; I am growing a surfeit of chard, so I always need new ways to use it up.
Eggs in a basket with smoky chard
Prep 10 min
Cook 10 min
Serves 2 (but scale up if you’re hungry)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and finely sliced
150g rainbow chard, roughly chopped
1 tsp hot smoked paprika
1 tsp flaky sea salt
Juice of ½ lemon
2 large slices good white bread or sourdough
2 medium eggs
50g greek yoghurt, to serve
Put a tablespoon of the oil in a large frying pan on a medium heat, add the garlicand fry for 30 seconds. Add the chard and paprika, and stir-fry for three to four minutes, just until the chard has wilted (this will take less time if it’s quite young). Season with a half-teaspoon of flaky sea salt and the lemon juice, then taste and add more salt as needed. Transfer the chard to a bowl and wipe out the pan with kitchen roll.
While the chard is cooking, use a round cutter to stamp out a circle from the centre of each slice of bread. Put the remaining oil in the now-empty chard pan on a medium heat, then lay in the bread (one slice at a time, if the pan’s not big enough for both) and its cut-out circle, too, if there’s room and fry for a minute just to get a little colour. Flip over, break an egg into the hole in the centre and fry for a minute or two, until the white is just set and the yolk runny; if you prefer your eggs over easy, by all means flip for 30 seconds to seal the other side.
Scatter each basket with a pinch of sea salt and serve with the smoky chard, fried bread circles and a big spoon of yoghurt alongside.