Quarantummy: Tomatoes and eggs

It’s not often that my cooking looks almost exactly like the picture in the recipe!

I found this awesome recipe online, and it looked pretty yummy, so I decided to try it. Naturally there were some substitutions. We didn’t have spinach, and we needed chickpeas for hummus, so I had to use something else.

Ingredients

• olive oil
• garlic – peeled and chopped
• crushed or diced tomatoes – 2 cans
• butter beans, 1 can, or lentils, 1/3 cup
• cream – ¼ cup
• salt and pepper to taste
• large eggs – 1 per person
• thyme
• cayenne pepper
• oregano

Procedure

1. Saute garlic in olive oil.
2. Add butter beans. NOTE: If you’re using dry lentils, boil them first until they’re tender. You can boil them with onion and garlic for flavor. When tender, remove from the liquid and add to the pan with the garlic. Reserve liquid–you can use this if the pan is getting dry later on.
3. Add tomatoes. Stir gently.
4. Add cream, and stir gently. Bring to a simmer.
5. Season with salt and pepper. I added cayenne and oregano for flavor.
6. If you used lentils, and the mixture is starting to reduce, you can add the liquid you used for boiling them.
7. Once you’re happy with the flavor, reduce heat and gently crack eggs into the tomatoes. Instructions from the original recipe say: Crack an egg into a small bowl, taking care not to break the yolk. Make a well in the sauce roughly large enough to hold the egg and slip it in so that the yolk and most of the white is contained (some white may spread out).
8. Simmer until eggs are cooked to your liking. (I like them a little runny.) Sprinkle thyme before serving.

I’m really happy with how this turned out, and even happier with the fact that it doesn’t take long to cook! It’s great on its own, and works well as a vegetarian dish.

Since we are not with vegetarians, we had this with fried fish on Good Friday. It’s good with grilled sausages too. It works well with rice, or you can have it with toasted bread and butter. At least twice I ate this with grilled sausage, and it was so heavy, I didn’t need rice or bread!