Eggs In Purgatory.
A recipe for eggs baked in tomato sauce that's not shakshuka.
This month on ingredient we’re focusing on Tinned Tomatoes: probably the most essential ingredient in all our cupboards which is always on standby to add depth, richness and a dose of Italian sunshine - even in the depths of winter - to everything you’re cooking.
You can already find the recipe for my Tomato Braised Bean and White Fish Stew with Gremolata here, and I’ve got another lovely dish for a blustery day coming very soon - finally abandoning attempts at repair of the old one my new oven was installed over the weekend so I’m finally able to play catch up on the recipes I owe you all! I’ll aim for it to still land in February, but if our appreciation of tinned tomatoes stretches a little into March (before we move onto March’s ingredient, of course) I’m hoping you won’t mind!
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Whilst I gave it a go for a few weeks, I don’t post on TikTok. I have really strong opinions on what short form video has done to the art of recipe creation, and besides, I don’t actually enjoy making video content all that much.
As a result, past the initial research period into what works and what doesn’t, I never really viewed much food content on TikTok as a consumer: funny cat videos, Formula 1 memes and the life and times of an exceptionally cool sheep called Burt who lives in New Zealand is what I occasionally open the app for. As a result, it is the only social media on my phone where the algorithm very rarely serves me food content.
J’s TikTok, on the other hand, whilst also containing plenty of cute and silly animals and memes poking fun at his beloved Ferrari’s current inability to win races, let alone world championships seems to be fed a lot of food videos. And sometimes, he saves them to show me later, either to help confirm my prejudices that TikTok is a bad thing for the food industry, or because he wants me to fix the main issue with the platform on a case by case basis: that it’s flooded with recipes without ingredient lists, clear directions or explanations, teaching and sharing nothing, content for content’s sake.
He’s seen something delicious, and wants me to figure out how to make it.
I’ll give credit where credit is due, when I was shown a video from TikTok user OnlyScrans (or is it a group of users?) teaching the viewer how to make the Napolese classic Uova al Purgatorio, otherwise known as Eggs in Purgatory, the voice over, if a little irritating (and either actually or wilfully ignorant of the recipe’s origins), did contain exact ingredients. It gave me a starting point re-creating the recipe into something I hope the rest of you can follow without having to pause a tiny screen every five seconds!
It’s a delicious dish perfect for sharing, with crusty bread for dunking and scooping, and is one of those great, back-pocket recipes that can work for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, or a midnight feast. I for one am glad I’ve perfected it as I always have eggs, tomatoes, some sort of Italian hard cheese, basil growing on the kitchen windowsill, and the village shop sells fat balls of mozzarella in little baggies of brine.
I was living and brunching in London for the peak of Shakshuka’s popularity, so I’m pretty sure in restaurants and in friend’s homes I’ve had tomatoes baked in spicy sauce every which way. Bolder was usually better, so when it came to creating an Italian-style sauce, I wanted to go heavy on the garlic and make sure there was some fire from red chilli flakes. But, as I wanted to keep the video’s addition of torn mozzarella to contrast in the pan with just-set egg whites, I also wanted to avoid the promised ‘pizza sauce flavour’ of the original video. Contrary to what the internet thinks, not everything is improved by taking it a step closer to pizza, so I opted for my preferred tomato sauce-flavouring method if infusing a few sprigs of fresh basil into the sauce instead of adding dried oregano.
One cue I did take from the video, however, was their choice of tinned tomatoes. I mentioned when I introduced this month’s ingredient a couple of weeks ago that I’d never tried Mutti’s finely chopped tomatoes. They’re what was used in the video, so I decided to test this with the couple of cans I picked up last week.
You can pretty much make a good rendition of eggs baked in tomato sauce with any kind of tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes cooked down into a rich sauce or bust cherry tomatoes would be good in summer, and if you’re happy with a few tomato chunks (though I think happiness will depend on their quality) regular tinned chopped tomatoes will work well, as would plum tomatoes crushed with a fist so they break down into a more uniform sauce. Straying away from tinned tomato territory even a jar of good-quality passata would work, though I’d suggest reducing it down a little more than you usually would to make sure the final product does not lean towards the watery side.
But, now I’ve tried it, I think the finely chopped tomatoes are the right choice here. Not only are they Mutti brand and therefore of a much better quality than average (which matters somewhere like this where the tomato flavour really shines) but they give you the best of both worlds: a textured sauce without big lumps perfect to use as a canvas for your eggs and mozzarella.
Eggs in Purgatory
Serves: 2, Preparation time: 5 minutes, Cooking time: 25 minutes
Whilst you can make this in any deep frying pan with an oven-proof handle, I also applaud the video’s use of a cast iron skillet. I’m still getting to know mine (and the slightly metallic taste of the sauce settled around last night’s skillet chicken makes me think I’ve ruined the seasoning and need to re-do it, needless to say it has been a steep learning curve!) but here it’s heat-storing properties help cook the egg whites at a good pace so you can still enjoy runny, dippy yolks, even once you’ve finished the cheese off under the grill / broiler.
I’ve tried this with a whole ball of mozzarella, but the eggs don’t cook properly and it releases too much water. Save it for a mozzarella, kimchee and spring onion panini (no, I don’t have a recipe for one, that was the recipe, all stuffed into a toastie last week and it was delicious!)