Tuck in to Cretan eggs with wild weeds
You may take your eggs with bacon, perhaps salmon, a bit of avocado or on a slice of crusty sourdough, but how about with weeds? The dark-green weeds that grew wild along the Aegean coast were gobbled gleefully by the Cretans for centuries before the Turkish eventually incorporated them into their cooking. This dish for Cretan eggs with wild weeds pays homage to those surprising little treasures, incorporating ingredients we can find readily here in Australia, such as endives, radicchio and rocket. Follow Istanbul-born chef Somer Sivrioğlu and food scholar David Dale’s lead as they explain in their new cookbook Anatolia how to construct this epic breakfast.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup of any or all of these, mixed: nettles, curly endives, chicory, dandelion greens, round radicchio, beetroot leaves, wild rocket (but not witlof)
3 spring onions
1 onion
1/3 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon hot paprika
4 eggs
pide bread, to serve
TO MAKE
If you are using nettles, use gloves to handle them. To remove the sting, put in a heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water for 30 seconds. Transfer to cold water for 30 seconds. Pick the green leaves and discard the stems.
Clean and finely chop the endives and the chicory, discarding the woody stems. Wash the spring onions, then remove the roots and green outer layer. Finely chop the onion.
Heat the olive oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat, then add the onion and brown for five minutes. Add the spring onions and cook for another three minutes, then add the wild leaves in this order (from toughest to softest): endives, chicory, radicchio, nettle, dandelion, beetroot leaves, wild rocket. Lightly fry for about five minutes to let any excess water evaporate. Add the spices and stir. Make four wells in the mixture and break an egg into each well. Continue to cook until the whites are set but the yolks are still runny.
Serve the kaygana in the pan for people to help themselves. If the yolks spread into the mixture, so much the better. Serve with pide.
Recipe and images from Anatolia by Somer Sivrioğlu and David Dale. Published by Murdoch Books.
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