Use a gratin dish that holds about 1 cup if you’re baking only one egg , and a slightly larger dish if you want to do two.

　　

Ingredients

About 1 cup grated zucchini

　　Salt

　　2 teaspoons butter

　　About 3 small mushrooms, finely chopped

　　1 scallion, finely chopped

　　3 or 4 teaspoons heavy cream

　　1 or 2 large eggs

　　Freshly ground pepper

　　Gratings of Parmesan (optional)

　　

Step 1

Put the zucchini in a strainer, work 1/2 teaspoon salt into it, then set it over a bowl to drain.

　　

Other Possibilities

Step 2

Look in your fridge and you may find you have some leftover leafy vegetables, such as spinach or Swiss chard, or some broccoli or its more elegant cousin broccolini, or a winter root vegetable you could mash up—any of these would make a fine bed for our baked egg and could be put directly into the gratin dish and heated quickly in the microwave.

　　

Microwaved Eggs

Step 3

Speaking of the microwave—an instrument of cooking I seldom use—one day I had a yen for a baked egg over some leftover ratatouille. After heating up the vegetables in the microwave, I thought I’d try dropping the egg on top and microwaving for just 1 minute instead of baking. And it was miraculously good. That dish took less than 5 minutes to put on the table.

　　The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. Copyright © 2009 by Judith Jones. Published by Knopf. All Rights Reserved.Judith Jones is senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf. She is the author of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food and the coauthor with Evan Jones (her late husband) of three books: The Book of Bread; Knead It, Punch It, Bake It!; and The Book of New New England Cookery. She also collaborated with Angus Cameron on The L. L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook, and has contributed to Vogue, Saveur, and Gourmet magazines. In 2006, she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives in New York City and Vermont.