Hash Brown One Eyes

Cara the Quarter-Life Cook joins the "Recipe of the Week" team from Big Girls, Small Kitchen, a food and recipe guide for twenty-something cooks looking for user-friendly, affordable ways to navigate their kitchens.

Ah, that moment of recognition when you discover that someone else eats the same favorite food combination as you. It's forges bonds instantly and can solve all kinds of mysteries. For example: in 1998's The Parent Trap, how would the American Lindsay Lohan have known that the British Lindsay Lohan was her identical twin separated at birth if they didn't both crave Oreos dunked in peanut butter?

Here's how this relates to brunch:

Growing up, we sometimes ate "One Eyes" for breakfast. You know, you'd cut out a hole in a piece of bread, crack an egg in its center, and fry the whole thing til the egg was cooked and the toast crispy. Kind of brilliant, and, I thought, unique. Not so. Apparently, it just ran under a horde of other aliases: Egg In The Hole In The Bread. Hole-y Toast. Egg In The Hole. Bird's Nest. Toad In The Hole. Abundant and literal, and I'm sure there are more.

By whatever name, the brilliance is in the simplicity. One Eyes take two things you'd normally eat at the same time on breakfast or brunch plates and marry them together as one. I was thinking about the other foods on that breakfast plate and it occurred to me you could perform the same marriage on eggs and hash browns. For lack of a better suggestion, I'm calling them Hash Brown One Eyes (and taking suggestions on the name).

What You Need:

* 2 baking potatoes

* 1 small onion

* 1 teaspoon salt

* 4 eggs

* 2 tablespoons flour

* oil for frying

How to Cook:

Grate the potatoes and the onion. Don't do this much before frying, as the potatoes will brown. Add the salt and flour, then beat in one egg.

In a frying pan, add oil to about 1/2 inch deep. Heat over medium heat until a shred of potato dropped in sizzles immediately. Gather one third of the potato mixture into a ball, squeeze out some of the liquid, and add to the frying pan. Flatten with a spatula, and cook on each side about 6-7 minutes until nicely browned. Remove to a paper towel to drain and repeat twice more.

About 30 minutes before serving, preheat the oven to 400°F. Arrange the pancakes on an oiled baking sheet, and do your best to smoosh a well down in the center of each. Carefully crack an egg into each recession and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the white is set and the yolk is as set as you like. Serve with ketchup and, in the spirit of latkes, pesto sour cream (just mix a couple tablespoons of pesto with about 1/2 cup of sour cream or creme fraiche).