Toast with Squash, Prosciutto, and an Egg

Each Thursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast -- because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: If you like toast and squash and prosciutto and eggs, you will like them together. 

This isn’t really my recipe. It’s April Bloomfield’s, and she is a most excellent person from whom to borrow a recipe. As Jamie Oliver apparently said -- according to the cover of A Girl And Her Pig -- “this chick cooks like a Ninja.” I agree.  

As I read the name of this little breakfast creation, I couldn’t stop myself from humming, “These are a few of my favorite things...” Toast plus squash plus pancetta PLUS a fried egg?! It’s a perfect example of the cooking approach of: if I like x and y, I’ll like them even more together. It often works.

I took a few liberties, changing up the spicing of the squash to include the gentle fragrance of thyme alongside the heat of the chiles, and using prosciutto instead of pancetta because, well, I had prosciutto. The combination is delightful, sweet, salty, meaty, a little spicy. What more could you possibly want in a breakfast (besides, of course, girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, or perhaps brown paper packages tied up with strings)?

Toast with Squash, Prosciutto, and an Egg

Serves 4

1 1/2-pound butternut squash, halved and seeds removed
1/2 tablespoon fresh thyme
2 pinches dried oregano
4 to 8 pinches chile flakes (adjust the amount based on your spiciness preferences)
1 clove garlic
Olive oil
Salt
4 long, thin slices of prosciutto
4 thick slices of toast
4 eggs

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photos by Emily Vikre