Hybrid dishes run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. For every Cronut and brookie bringing delight, there’s a ramen burger or pizza taco just waiting to make you shake your head.
The best hybrid dishes operate on several levels. They have cooking techniques that can be seamlessly merged, flavors that build on one another and overlapping dispositions that make so much sense together that the new dish becomes a classic, not a flash-in-the-pan (I’m looking at you, mufgel).
Asparagus egg-in-a-hole checks all the right boxes. At its heart, it’s a cross of two eggy bread recipes – Parmesan French toast and egg-in-a-hole – that is served with a pile of roasted asparagus to catch all the saucy yolk.
Parmesan French toast, a brilliant recipe from Nigella Lawson, is a piquant, cheesy take on the usual maple-soaked staple. For this version, I streamlined the ingredients, eliminating the paprika, mustard and Worcestershire. With the additions of runny eggs, roasted asparagus, thyme and scallions, the bread doesn’t need any extra oomph.
Then I cut holes into those Parmesan- imbued slices and cracked eggs right into them to cook. Another name for egg-in-a-hole is bird-in-a-nest, and when you see those yolks nestled cozily into the bread, you understand why.