Truffled Egg with Smoked Salmon & Greens

Truffled Egg with Smoked Salmon | Gluten-free, dairy-free

A friend shared with me a saying from a wise man named Goethe. He once said:

“Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.”

Zing. How easy it is to strive for where we aren’t: sipping margaritas on a crystal blue beach, working at a better job in a more exciting city with a more fabulous house or apartment, in a shiny life where people don’t get mad and there are no bad hair days and it’s sunny every.single.day. But here in real life, the non-Instagram-worthy version, there are simple tasks that are necessary for life and not so glamorous. Like keeping your children alive, every.single.day. Flossing your teeth. Paying bills. Getting an oil change (even typing it makes me cringe). Fighting fires at work. Traffic jams. Loving people who are hard to love. Something about the human heart makes it easy for discontentment to creep into the everyday.

But what if the things that are part of the everyday, the things that must be done, could also be things we love? As fundamental as it is for our souls to be wishing for something better and brighter, perhaps the simple perspective change in this quote could be put into practice. And actually, I believe it can be: up until 8 years ago, the simple everyday task of preparing food was an absolute chore. Hate is not too strong of a word for it (people in my life at the time can attest). There was nothing that interested me less than making food, and I loathed that I had to do it multiple times per day. Long long long story short, people began to enter my life who loved it: loved the process, the grocery shopping (what?!), the cooking, the conversation, and the breaking bread together. This daily chore could actually be…gulp, fun? The moment I started to open my mind, my life changed forever. Joy was born into this simple daily task. Not that every day is rosy, but I have grown to truly love feeding myself and other people.

And in that spirit, here’s a recipe that’s so simple to put nourishing and elegant food on the table, you can’t help  but love it. You may have heard our recent podcast on brain food with Dr. Drew Ramsey (if not, listen to 50 Shades of Brain Food). He’s a psychiatrist and an expert on how the food we eat can affect our mental health. Basically, if we eat a diet colorful diet full of nutrients instead of the typical American brown-and-white one, we can can combat things like depression and anxiety, and fuel our brains. Pretty powerful stuff. Dr. Ramsey has a little rhyme for good brain food: seafood, greens, nuts, and beans, and this one features the first two. We occasionally flex from our mostly vegetarian diet to eat fish and meat, and smoked salmon is in both Alex and my hall of fame for top taste treats. Here it’s combined with a fried egg drizzled with my other favorite flavor, truffle oil, and accompanied by a pile of greens. So easy and so good. A great brunch or even dinner option, it’s from Dr. Ramsey’s new cookbook, Eat Complete; it’s one of our favorite new cookbooks, and the link to buy it is below. (The upfront material is fascinating, IMHO!)

Here’s to learning to love what must be done, every delicious bite at a time.

Podcast: 50 Shades of Brain Food
Cookbook: Eat Complete: The 21 Nutrients The Fuel Brainpower, Boost Weight Loss, and Transform Your Health

Truffled Egg with Smoked Salmon & Greens

 

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by: a Couple Cooks

Serves: 4

What You Need

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 4 pasture-raised eggs
• 2 teaspoons truffle oil
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 shallot or ½ red onion, thinly sliced
• 8 ounces watercress
• 2 tablespoons balsamic or cider vinegar
• 8 ounces smoked salmon

What To Do

1. Coat a large skillet with half of the olive oil and warm it over medium-high heat. Crack the eggs into the skillet, drizzle with the truffle oil, and sprinkle with paprika. Cook 3 to 4 minutes until the whites are cooked through but the yolks are still soft.
2. While the eggs are cooking, prepare the watercress. Coat a separate large skillet with the remaining olive oil. Add the shallot or onion and cook to 2 to 3 minutes until the shallot starts to soften. Add the watercress and cook for 1 minutes until wilted. Sprinkle with the vinegar.
3. Divide the mixture among four plates and top each with an egg and 2 ounces of the smoked salmon. Serve immediately.

Notes

Printed with permission from Eat Complete: The 21 Nutrients The Fuel Brainpower, Boost Weight Loss, and Transform Your Health by Drew Ramsey, MD

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