Portuguese Style Baked Eggs -eggs baked in a nest of cheese in a quick spicy tomato sauce- make an incredible breakfast, brunch, lunch, OR dinner! Serve with crusty bread and a salad and you have a meal fit for a king.

I’ve mentioned a time or two before that breakfast and I are not always on speaking terms. I’m not the “spring out of bed ready to take on the world and solve math equations” kind of person.

It takes all I have to make a cup of tea and try to drink it without dribbling it down my front in order to become semi-coherent. The kids are usually on their own reheating something I’ve made ahead of time for them, or eating lots of peanut butter toast.

Don’t misunderstand, I love the general category of breakfast food. Just not -you know- for breakfast.

Truth: I’m not even ready to eat that much food in the classic brunch time frame. Instead, I’m a huge fan of the magical world of brinner {breakfast for dinner} where I’m allowed to prepare and eat all of those indulgent and delicious breakfast foods without being required to wield a knife or play with flames before being fully conscious.

Waffles, pancakes, eggs Benedict? I love them all dearly.

The current top of the  heap, “yeah-baby” brinner recipe is Portuguese Style Baked Eggs. We’re talking about a thick, slightly spicy pan sauce made of red peppers, onions, fresh herbs, and tomatoes, simmered ’til thick, then used as a nest for ricotta cheese and fresh eggs that bake in that sauce.

You then cover it with copious amounts of cheese, and pop it into a hot oven until the sauce and cheese are bubbly and there are little browned bits of cheese clinging to the edges of the pan. The eggs, once set, are spooned onto plates with the thick, cheesy sauce and served with crunchy, toasted, rustic bread.

In our house, we accompany this with some good olives, fresh radishes with butter, and/or thinly sliced radishes on buttered toast and some clementines or orange slices. Pure heaven.

Whoa.

Just whoa. It’s such an easy dish to make for such an enormously impressive payoff.

Portuguese Style Baked Eggs might just be the most ultimate brunch/brinner food in all of history. My husband’s first intelligible comment while eating it (after a lot of “Guuhhhhhhn. Mmmmmmmmmm. Wow.” and the like) was “If I ever needed to cure a hangover, this would be the best possible cure ever. This has it all, salt, fat, and comfort.”

So there you have it. With endorsements like that, who needs anything else except for maybe a spoon?

P.S. This dish is a fantastic vegetarian entree and is Lenten Friday friendly.

Cook’s Notes

Don’t let the length of the ingredients list sway you. They are all items that you’re either likely to have on hand already, or that are easy to source at even moderately stocked grocery stores.

While I prefer to make Portuguese Style Baked Eggs using smoked paprika, it is also good made with ‘standard’ paprika (sweet or hot, as you wish). Smoked Paprika is available in many grocery stores now, but is also available on Amazon.com.

You can use whichever kind of bread you like best for the toast, but Portuguese Style Baked Eggs DO need toast to accompany them so you can sop up all that lovely sauce. I prefer a rustic olive bread or rosemary garlic loaf, but Sesame Semolina Braided Bread, crusty French baguette, or Italian country loaves work beautifully, too.

When making Portuguese Style Baked Eggs, I find it easiest to toss the whole stems of basil and oregano into the sauce and then fish them out (letting the leaves that fall off stay in the sauce) before adding the cheese and eggs. If you’d prefer, you can strip the leaves off of the stems before cooking to eliminate  ‘work’ on the back end. It’s a personal preference thing, so do whichever you like best.

The jalapenos are there only for flavour. This is why you’ll be piercing them with a sharp knife several times but plunking them whole to simmer in the sauce.

Leaving them whole makes them easier to retrieve from the sauce after they’ve given their all. This is the same technique we used in our Slow-Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala.

The red pepper and tomato sauce can be made and refrigerated a day ahead of time, if you’d like, making it a lovely brunch option, too. If you do this, just reheat the sauce and remove your stems of herbs before nestling the ricotta cheese and eggs into it.

I make Portuguese Style Baked Eggs in a large cast-iron skillet from start to finish, making it a one-pot wonder. If you don’t have an oven safe skillet, though, you can make the sauce on the stove-top and transfer to a 9-inch by 13-inch baking dish for the time it needs to spend in the oven with the eggs and cheese.

If you can’t eat 6 eggs in one meal, you can prepare the eggs in single serving cast-iron mini-skillets, ramekins, or oven safe bowls. Transfer the sauce to each of the intended vessels, covering the bottom of the dish by at least an inch, but preferably by 1 1/2 inches to 2 inches.

Add the 2 tablespoons of ricotta and one egg to each dish. Top with cheese and bake as directed, but be aware that the eggs may be done slightly faster in the single serving dishes.

Just watch them for the white to be set. As for the remaining sauce, cool, transfer to a zipper top bag, squeeze as much air out as possible, and freeze to be used within 3 months for optimal quality.

Because the eggs continue to cook  in the sauce even after taking Portuguese Style Baked Eggs from the oven, this is a dish you want to wait for rather than having it wait for you. In other words, have everything ready to go and everyone who is going to eat ready to eat before baking the eggs.

If you want to have runny yolks, it’s best to pull the pan from the oven just as the whites are set. If you don’t mind the yolks becoming firm, it’s okay to let them both cook and rest in the pan a little longer.

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Use these to make Portuguese Style Baked Eggs:

• Le Creuset Large Cast Iron Skillet ~or~
• Individual Cast Iron Skillets
• Smoked Paprika

Portuguese Style Baked Eggs

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Rebecca Lindamood

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Total Time 50 minutes mins

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Portuguese Style Baked Eggs are high on the comfort food list; eggs baked over a bed of ricotta cheese in a spicy red pepper and tomato sauce. Adapted from and with thanks to BonAppetit.com

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 red bell peppers stem and seeds removed, thinly sliced
• 1 large yellow or cooking onion peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
• 10 cloves garlic peeled and thinly sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon smoked or 'regular' paprika
• 2 whole jalapeno peppers washed and pierced several times with a sharp knife
• 1 can fire roasted diced tomatoes 14.5 ounces
• 1 can whole tomatoes in juice 28 ounces
• 4 stems fresh basil with the leaves plus extra for garnish
• 4 stems fresh oregano with the leaves plus extra for garnish
• 6 large eggs
• 3/4 cup ricotta cheese
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• kosher salt and black pepper

To Serve:

• rustic bread drizzled with olive oil and toasted in a pan or on a grill

Optional for serving, but tasty:

• kalamata or other good olives
• fresh radishes with softened butter and sea salt
• clementines or orange segments

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 400°F.
• Heat the olive oil in a heavy, oven-safe skillet over medium low heat. Add the thinly sliced bell peppers and onions with a hearty pinch of salt and stir to evenly coat. Cook the onions and peppers gently for 6 to 8 minutes, or until the onions are semi-translucent and the peppers are starting to soften. Add the garlic cloves, crushed red pepper, chili powder, and paprika and stir, cooking until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the jalapeno peppers, diced tomatoes, and the juice from the whole tomatoes. Use your hands to crush and pull apart the whole tomatoes over the pan, one at a time. Stir well. Add in the stems of fresh basil and oregano, press them into the sauce with a spoon, and bring the sauce to a simmer over medium heat. Allow the sauce to gently simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, or until it has thickened and the vegetables are all very soft. Taste test the sauce and adjust with kosher salt and black pepper as needed.
• *If you do not have an oven safe skillet, this is the time to transfer the sauce to a 9-inch by 13-inch baking dish or individual baking dishes.
• Use the back of a wooden spoon to make 6 indentations in your sauce. Into each indentation, dollop 2 tablespoons of ricotta cheese, pressing those into the indentation, too. On top of each ricotta nest, crack one egg. Sprinkle the cheddar and Parmesan cheeses evenly over the top and pop the pan into the preheated oven. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the sauce is very bubbly, the egg whites are set and yolks are cooked to your desired doneness (See Cook's Notes), and the cheese is melted and browned around the edges. Remove the pan from the oven and garnish with additional fresh basil and oregano leaves. Serve family style in the pan with a platter of fresh toast, a bowl of olives, fresh radishes, and some fruit.

Nutrition

Calories: 331kcalCarbohydrates: 10gProtein: 16gFat: 25gSaturated Fat: 9gCholesterol: 202mgSodium: 298mgPotassium: 337mgFiber: 2gSugar: 4gVitamin A: 3145IUVitamin C: 84.4mgCalcium: 303mgIron: 2mg

Nutritional information is an estimate and provided to you as a courtesy. You should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe using your preferred nutrition calculator.

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This post was originally published March 6, 2015.