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.

Panzanella Salad

Panzanella Salad

I composed most of this post over a month ago when the summer was still in full force and therefore tomatoes were at their peak. Life got busy, time passed and finally I'm getting around to sharing this beauty.
One of my go to meals each summer is the versatile Panzanella, or Tuscan Bread Salad. If you're a breadaholic, like me, it's a wonderful summer comfort food. I'll never forget the first time I made it, I enjoyed it so much that I have the time, place and company etched in my food memory bank (a fun place to visit!).

The basic premise of cubes of stale bread, a good olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing, tomatoes, cucumbers and fresh basil, can be taken in many directions. I usually add white beans and chunks of Parmesan which makes it just delicious. I have substituted zucchini, green beans, edamame, peas and also added leftover chicken or pork. Some bacon would be nice although surprisingly I haven't tried that yet.

Traditionally the bread used is stale, not toasted. It's a great 'make ahead' meal; it really needs to sit together in your refrigerator for a couple of hours to give adequate time to marry the flavors and for the bread to soak the yummy dressing.

Summer may be over but we are still harvesting cucumbers from our teeny tiny vegetable patch and the tomatoes are holding their own in our local farm store. So, if you're like me and desperately holding on to the last remnants of summer, make yourself a panzanella salad.

Panzanella Salad

adapted from an Everday Food Recipe

Ingredients

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

2 cans cannellini beans (drained and rinsed)

3 cups of cubed stale crusty bread (preferably wholewheat)

1 lb plum tomatoes (or whatever variety you have), cut into bitesize pieces

1 English cucumber, chopped into bitesize pieces, skin on

1/4 medium red onion, very thinly sliced

4 oz Parmesan cheese, cut roughly into small chunks

1/4 cup fresh basil leaves

Directions

1. Using a large bowl, mix the vinegar, oil, salt and pepper.
2. Add the beans, bread, tomatoes, cucumber, onion and cheese
3. Toss together gently to ensure all ingredients are coated with the dressing
4. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours an up to 8 hours.
5. Add the basil just before serving

A couple of notes on the recipe:

• This is a great leftover "user upper"; add whatever is lurking in your fridge (within reason!) See below for photos of my leftover panzanella.
• We have not been growing english cucumbers, so I roughly peel the kirbys, deseed them and chop.
• This is very tasty as a side with fish or on it's own as a vegetarian dinner.

Enjoy!





Healthier Macaroni Cheese (my way!)



Macaroni cheese in a July heatwave! Yes I am nuts but here goes!

Jamie Oliver is a genius. For some time, I've been trying to find a healthier version of mac'n'cheese, that would still meet the requirements of my older daughter. I think we're finally getting somewhere. I know it may not seem like mac 'n' cheese weather; it's been a scorchy hot week here in the northeast, but the request was made and so I grinned and bore the heat (and turned the AC on!).

I have never seen my daughter eat so much food, as she did on a rare eating out venture to our local diner. She ordered mac 'n' cheese and devoured  the most enormous amount. Don't get me wrong; I love to see my kids enjoy their food; but this was "out of a box" mac 'n' cheese. Honestly, I have been a little offended she has never quite matched that "competition winning scoff" with any food that I've cooked her. She still talks about it every day we drive past there.

Anyway, I don't know why I hadn't reached for one of my Jamie books on this topic before. He's excellent at a re-work of a simple recipe, just giving it a bit more interest and flavor. So his secret; using the food processor, puree fresh tomatoes, anchovies and sundried tomatoes. His recipe uses light cream but I just used 1% milk and it turned out rich enough for us. Those hidden extras really give a depth of flavor which makes me as an adult enjoy mac 'n' cheese without all that clawing, thick, gloopy, heavy, too rich sauce. Most importantly, the tomatoes make the sauce orange; a critical requirement if its to pass the kid test.

Finally, I didn't call it macaroni cheese (to my kids). In fact, I didn't use macaroni; I had some nice curly wurly pasta which I thought would work even better at getting the sauce in every nook and cranny. I find that if I pigeon hole a meal by a name, often it is rejected outright, before giving a chance. So, I generally think on my feet as I place the plate before them. This one I just called cheesy pasta.

I know it was a hit because my older daughter asked if I could make it "3 times every week". My younger just pronounced it her "favorite".

Healthier Macaroni Cheese

(adapted from Jamie Oliver; Jamie's Dinners. Tomato Macaroni Cheese)

Ingredients

12oz box macaroni (or "curly wurly" pasta as I used)
approx 7oz wholewheat breadcrumbs
1 lb fresh tomatoes (I used sweet cherry tomatoes)
1 glove garlic, peeled
2 large handfuls of fresh basil
4 oz sundried tomatoes, chopped,
2 anchovies
salt and pepper
2 cups grated Parmesan
2 1/2 cups milk
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
8 oz fresh mozzarella, chopped into small cubes
1 tablespoon chopped thyme leaves
olive oil

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 400°F, 200°C
2. Cook the pasta until al dente; drain, but save a ladleful of the cooking water.
3. Using the food processor, blend the tomatoes, garlic, basil, sundried tomatoes and anchovies for appox 30 seconds.
4. Add the milk, vinegar, and 1 cup of the Parmesan
5. Blend until smooth and the season to your taste.
6. pour the sauce from the food processor over the drained pasta.
7. Add a little of the reserved cooking water in order to make the dish quite loose.
8. Pour the whole lot into a lightly greased baking dish and push the mozzarella cubes gently into the top.
9. Mix the breadcrumbs, thyme and remaining cheese, then sprinkle over the top of the casserole.
10. Drizzle a little olive oil over the top to get a lovely crunchy top
11. Place in the oven for approx 15 minutes or until bubbling and crunchy on top

Enjoy!