For Easter Brunch or Any Spring Thing: Greens, Eggs, and Ham!
With apologies to Theodor Seuss Geisel, we took inspiration from his great work—as well as mother nature’s—for this spring greens, eggs, and ham casserole. It’s an Easter brunch recipe (hello, people from Google!), or anytime spring brunch recipe that you can prepare before hungry guests come over, and pop in the oven right when they do. Each serving is a bird’s nest of creamy greens, croutons, and pancetta that cradle a baked egg. Sound good? Yeah, because it is.
The recipe is a Molly Baz creation that sought to achieve one goal: “Create a yum-delish spring-has-sprung brunch dish.” It’s got this green shakshuka thing going on, combined with steakhouse creamed spinach, combined with signature Molly Baz comfort food flavor. You can use spinach/chard/mustard greens, what have you—but it’s two pounds of green things, so we’re going to shamelessly confess right now to using that Costco size container of spinach and choosing to not wash it. (Pretty sure Molly told me that blanching counts as washing.) The nests are creamy, the eggs perfectly cooked and custard-like, and the croutons...are croutons. I feel I need to emphasize the fact that there are 10 garlic cloves in this recipe. 10.
10!!!
It comes together in three steps. I was going to say it’s sort of like you are the mama bird, building her temporary mansion, but then you eat the eggs, so that went to a dark place quickly. Forget the birds.
First blanch all the greens in salty boiling water, then squeeze the water out and chop.
Second, cook bacon, add scallions, chiles, garlic, and finally the greens.
Third, mix in the heavy cream (oh yeah), Parmesan (mhm), and dill (whatever, not my thing).
Assemble in a baking sheet over croutons, use a spoon to make indentations for eggs, crack yolks into each divot.
Bake; eat.
If you play your cards right, it can all happen in one Dutch oven + one 13 x 9” baking pan. Blanching in the pot first, then emptying the water and using it again for the pancetta, etc. You can even skip the “ham” part entirely if you desire, and cook the garlic, scallions, and greens in olive oil. Do NOT sub the heavy cream for anything less fatty though—Molly tried with half-and-half and it split.
The recipe feeds six people, if everyone wants a whole egg. You could tack on more servings if you divide the eggs—there are plenty of greens to go around. (We did that during tastings.) What you can’t do is add more nests. (Molly tried to squeeze in eight; they didn’t fit.) Then take a spatula, and divide and conquer.
Get the recipe:
Greens Eggs and Ham
