Soft Boiled Egg with Prosciutto & Rustic Toast

Ginny at Just Get Floury is hosting a food blogging event. For those you not in the food blogging world, a food blogging event is when a blogger comes up with a theme or challenge and fellow food bloggers create a dish that abides to the rules of the event. In other words, it’s one of those dorky things that foodies do!

Anyway, back to Ginny’s event…her theme is coming up with a dish that serves at least two people for less than $5. Seeing that I blew too much money the other day after spending a relaxing afternoon sitting at Café Cluny while grazing on a wonderful selection of dishes (coupled with an excellent white ale from Maine, whose name I wish I could recall), this challenge was of a particular interest to me.

Since I live in New York, everything has an automatic 10% increase in prices. So the focus of my dish needed to be really cheap to allow me the budget to dress it up appropriately. Mmm…what is super cheap? Eggs! Okay, I now had something to work with.

I recently was reading about the various ways of preparing eggs and learned about soft boiling eggs. Yum! So elegant yet simplistic. I love eggs on toast so this was the next logical item to add to the dish, but I still needed something more. I wanted it to be special so I figured prosciutto would be fabulous with this. Oh, and topped with some parmesan cheese and a little sage…now I have the perfect dish.

Soft boiling the eggs did take a few tries—I’m not going to lie. In a large pot you need to boil enough water that will cover the eggs by a couple inches. Once the water comes to a boil, quickly turn down the heat to bring it to a simmer. At this point, lower your eggs into the water and cook. I had large eggs and found that 6 minutes cooked the whites of the eggs but left the yoke nice and gooey. You may need to play with this to get it right. When the eggs are ready, remove them from the pot and place them in a cool water bath. Serve soon after.

To remove the top of the egg shell, take a spoon and firmly (but with caution) tap around the top of the egg (about 1/3 way down from the top). I basically created a dotted “crack” line around the top and then went back to further crack the remaining line. Then, take a pairing knife and cut around the egg where you broke the shell with the knife. You can now remove the “lid” of the egg.

If you prefer to make an easier egg, I think serving a sunny side up egg will work just as well.

This dish is super simple, but is really good. The gooeyness of the egg is such a great compliment to the crunchy toast. Furthermore, the saltiness if the prosciutto helps make the egg taste somewhat sweet. The sage then brings in a really nice earthy tone to the flavor. I originally meant for the sage as only a garnish, but it actually brings a lot to the dish and pulls together all the components.

So, how much does this dish cost for two servings (note, we get an exception for 3 staple pantry items)? $3.66 (taking into consideration unit pricing).

So here is how you make it for two people:

• 2 Sourdough bread slices ($0.30)
• 4 tbsp Olive oil (staple pantry item)
• 4 slices of Prosciutto ($2.10)
• Fresh parmesan cheese, to garnish ($0.25)
• 6 large Sage leaves ($0.25)
• 2 large Eggs, soft boiled (see my explanation above) ($0.76)

1. Place a grill pan on high heat. Lightly brush olive oil onto both sides of sourdough bread slices and place in hot grill pan. Let sit until toasted and then flip bread over. Once toasted, remove and put aside on serving plates.
2. Drape two slices of prosciutto over each slice of toast.
3. Grate or slice fresh parmesan cheese on top of prosciutto. Place sage leaves on plate next to toast (or you can also chop it up and sprinkle the sage over the prosciutto and toast).
4. Once eggs are ready, quickly serve next to toast. You will need small holders for your eggs (you can find actual “egg holders”, but I used sake cups).

Enjoy!

Note:
If you have leftover prosciutto and sage, you can use it for a pasta dish. Tonight for dinner I cooked up some pasta. As it was cooking, I chopped up some prosciutto, sage, and garlic. I then drained the pasta, reserving some of the water. In the pasta pot I added some olive oil and the garlic and quickly sautéed it. Then I added back the pasta and mixed in the prosciutto, sage, some pasta water, a little heavy cream, and fresh ground pepper. In the serving dish, I topped it off with some fresh parmesan cheese. It was so easy and so yummy!