Like bacon and eggs, only better

There, all better. That’s how I felt after a brunch of coppa cups, Christos tomato soup and salad. We’d gone to bed way late after I slithered home from another night shift, and it was way too late for breakfast. I didn’t think I had anything in the house to make for lunch, and then I remembered seeing this recipe on the website of Northern Waters Smokehaus, a fine food purveyor in DeWitt-Seitz Marketplace, just across from Lake Avenue Cafe, one of my favorite places to have lunch in Duluth. I had some coppa left over from another purpose that was best used sooner rather than later, so there you go.

I didn’t bother with the fancy cheese lattice called for in the recipe on the site, which I’m sure would elevate it even further. But I’m only so perky after a night shift, and that’s a lot to expect right after waking up. As it was, these were sublime without that extra touch. No need to salt these, the fine coppa from Bill’s Imported Foods took care of the salt factor.

Coppa cups

Adapted from Northern Waters Smokehaus

Ingredients:

Coppa, 2 thin slices per muffin cup, or enough slivers to cover the muffin cup

eggs, 1 per muffin cup

pepper for garnish

Method:

Spray as many cups of a muffin tin as you’re using with nonstick spray. Line with coppa and bake for 10 minutes at 350 to crisp cook the coppa. Remove from oven and crack open an egg inside each cup. (I found it worked well to crack open the eggs into a custard cup first and then slip them in.) Return the muffin pan to the oven and bake until the outsides of the eggs are set or cooked the way you like them. I baked these for 12½ minutes at 350 in a convection oven; at that point the outsides were set and the insides still had that slight bit of gooey runniness to the yokes that’s my idea of perfection.

Dave said he had been hoping the lunch solution somehow involved eggs, but this was even better than he envisioned. Plus, they’re kind of cute on the plate. Next time I might gild the lily by trying for the cheese crisp garnish.

Meanwhile, all the savory goodies on the Northern Waters site make me even more impatient for winter to end and it's time to ride to Duluth for lunch. Clearly some of that pancetta needs to come home in a saddlebag.