Baked Eggs with Duchess Potatoes

I often wonder how much interesting can breakfast eggs be? And just when I was about to settle for another omelet, I found a basic Duchess Potato recipe with baked egg. I secretly enjoyed the amusement on Adrian's face when he saw my breakfast egg "when you say eggs". It's as if I have made it a mission to make breakfast eggs as interesting as possible. The recipe as it is seems rather bland for our liking. Hence I added some vegetables and herbs liberally. They turned out great! It felt like the right food for the stomach. Non-vegetarian can substitute the vegetables with minced meat.

Ingredients:
makes 4 servings
Basic Duchess Potato

• 2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks (I kept the skin for its fiber)
  
• 1 whole egg, beaten slightly with the egg yolks
• 2 egg yolks
  
• 2 tablespoon butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Baked Eggs

• 4 eggs for center
• 4 tablespoons cream (optional)
• Scallion, green part, chopped for garnish (I used leek)
  

1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until they are very tender (about 20 minutes). Turn off the burner, drain the potatoes and melt the butter in the pan. Add the potatoes back in the pan, mash thoroughly with butter, then add the beaten eggs, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Combine quickly and completely. (I halved the recipe and used the extra one egg yolk from the Apricot Agave Nectar Souffle. I also added some minced parsley+basil to the mashed potatoes)
2. Either place the potatoes in a pastry bag fitted with a large tip, or a ziploc bag with a small piece of a bottom corner snipped off. Pipe the potatoes along the edge of a buttered baking dish - if it is a deep ramekin, you can pipe a bottom layer of potato, then pipe decoratively along the edge. Add a tablespoon of cream to the bottom after piping the potatoes and before adding the egg. (I used a shallow pan that was basically meaningless to do piping. I added chopped sun-dried tomatoes and asparagus after the cream)
3. Crack an egg into the center and bake in a 180C oven until the egg whites are set and opaque, but the yolk is still runny. The potatoes will just be browning.
4. (When the eggs were done, I sprinkled them with some tarragon and pepper before serving)