Eggs Poached in My Best Ever Homemade Tomato Sauce

My Best Ever Homemade Tomato Sauce

This is the tale of  4 yummy things:

Homemade Tomato Sauce
Cheesy Sodabread
Poached eggs
Basil olive oil

I've been thinking about eggs for dinner all week, but my husband is not such a fan. So I held off until he left for a business trip today, when I unfolded my plan. Eggs poached on homemade tomato sauce have long appealed to me, but only today did I actually get off my behind and make them. This dinner is ridiculously easy but rams home how good ingredients can result in the tastiest food.

Having bought a sizable quantity of San Marzano tomatoes last weekend I decided the moment was right to make a batch of tomato sauce. My 3 year old was (sort of) resting on the couch after lunch, so I set to work. I don't have a standard method of making tomato sauce, in fact we don't often eat it in this house. When I was pregnant with my second child the mere smell of store bought tomato sauce gave me instant nausea. To this day I still dislike most store bought tomato sauces but homemade is a different matter. Nevertheless, I knew it needed to be good, so I opened my "Jamie's Dinners" for advice.

Simply using garlic, tomatoes and a little of my new favorite ingredient; O&Co basil olive oil (Thanks Kirsty!) I made a simply delicious tomato sauce. If you can get your hands on some of this olive oil, buy it! It's subtle and yet amazing in it's ability to enhance the flavor of all sorts of dishes. I've used it in dressings, with my pea puree, and tonight, in the absence of fresh basil, it infused my sauce with an extra richness and extra something yummy. That said, fresh basil and good extra virgin olive oil would make a perfect substitute in this or any other recipe.

My Best Ever Homemade Tomato Sauce

Eggs poached in Homemade Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped or minced

3 large (28oz) cans of whole tomatoes (the best you can get; I used San Marzano) Do not break up the tomatoes until after the sauce is cooked. The tomato seeds may make the sauce bitter; yuck, I learned from experience in the past.

2 teaspoons olive oil (I used basil olive oil)

salt and pepper to taste (Go easy on the salt; your tomatoes may already be quite salty)

To finish:

1 tablespoon basil olive oil

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 

Directions

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pan on medium and add the garlic.
2. Cook gently for approx 3 minutes then add the tomatoes
3. Cover and simmer the sauce for approx 30 minutes
4. Turn the heat off and glug in the basil olive oil (or chopped basil leaves and olive oil) and balsamic vinegar. 
5. Gently break up the tomatoes with the back of a spoon or a potato masher

To make the poached eggs, simply crack the eggs in a small bowl then gently place in the sauce. Cover and cook on a medium heat for approx 5 minutes.

I served mine on top of Cheesy Sodabread Rolls. I thought it was simply delicious and it went down pretty well with the 5 and under crowd. The only objection was a yolk, but we worked around that!

Enjoy the sauce endlessly with pasta, fish, poached eggs, or cook your sausages in it.

Cheesy Sodabread recipe is next in line for the posting.