Coddled Egg with Crab, Bacon and Leeks

I know I've mentioned Tasting Table in my blogs before.  This is another recipe sent to me through them.  If you like food, recipes, cookbooks, restaurants, beverages, almost anything that has anything to do with food or drink, I encourage you to sign up for their emails.  It was from Tasting Table that I found Jennifer Reese's book and the bread that is now a staple in our home.

Here is a LINK to the recipe.  I've also pinned it to my Pinterest Kitchen board.  Yes, another addiction but that's for another time.

I thought this sounded good from the first read of the recipe, grits, bacon, bacon fat, olive oil, oh yea and things that aren't so bad for you like garlic, celery root, chipotle pepper, ginger, leeks, thyme, rosemary, tomatoes, crab meat, tarragon and eggs! 

Whew, that's a mouthful and it did take a bit of time to get my Mes En Plas in place but once I had everything prepped this went together very quickly.

Grits.  Nothing to them.  Boil water, add grits, wait.

How bad can a recipe be if it starts by frying bacon and then instructs you to add olive oil to the bacon grease to make 1/4 cup?

Next you saute the garlic in the bacon grease/olive oil mixture until it's pale gold.  This picture doesn't do it justice!

Then you add the celery root, whole dried chile and ginger and let those flavors start to meld, then add the leeks and a little salt.  Can you smell this?

Finally the thyme, rosemary, bacon and tomatoes are added and cooked until most of the moisture is gone.

The grits go in with a little more chicken broth and the mixture is cooked until it gets a little thick,.  Each of these steps took only a couple of minutes.  It sounds a lot putzier than it really was.

The crab and tarragon are added off the heat and the herb sprigs and chile are removed.

I often wondered what people made in these little pots.  We usually use them for ice cream dishes!  Now I know!  I filled the four ramekins then I used my ladle to create a well in the center of each one for the egg.

Add the eggs!  You'll notice that one doesn't have an egg.  Well, Dave doesn't like yolk.  So I agreed to leave one "plain" and add a scrambled egg to it if he wanted it.  Turns out the yolk was firm enough he could eat around it.  The dogs were thrilled.  Who knew they both like yolk?

These were delicious!  I'd cook them just a little less time next time.  I cooked them the minimum this time but I like just a little runnier egg yolk.

I was amazed at how the chipotle flavor came though just from sauteing the dried chile in with the other ingredients.  Looks like I've found another "keeper".  These will be fun to serve to guests for brunch.