The Joy of Eggs Cooked in Tomato Sauce

And a recipe for breakfast

On a recent trip to Belfast I was able to indulge in one of life’s greatest pleasures, the hotel buffet breakfast. Sausages? Tick. Beans? Tick. Do-it-yourself conveyor belt style toaster and tiny jams? Tick. There was fruit salad, normal salad, smoked salmon, yoghurt, cereal, sweet pastries, deli meats and cheeses and, due to the good fortune of being in Northern Ireland, both black and white pudding.

Much like the supermarket salad bar, the key to success with a hotel buffet breakfast is to release your mind of restrictions and inhibitions and embrace a nonsensical smörgåsbord of culture clashing culinary delights. This is a rare opportunity to enjoy sun-dried tomatoes and tiny balls of mozzarella alongside your bacon. To have a vanilla yoghurt as a kind of breakfast dessert! These are the heady dreams of childhood, realised in front of your eyes. What’s more, suddenly, non breakfast foods become breakfast foods. Pasta salad! Olives! Potato wedges! There are no rules here, you have entered the Garden of Eden and god and Instagram are looking the other way. An hour or so later, sitting passenger side in a 9 seater people carrier (the only automatic car in Belfast airport) winding down country lanes, the many gastronomic cultures now represented in my stomach were getting on almost as well as they do on the world stage. In my excitement, I had overdone it, much like turning 18.

In this part of the world (I’m writing from the UK), we have ‘breakfast foods’. Foods that, at some point, someone (boring) decided were somehow more appropriate to be eaten in the morning than others. They are usually carbohydrate based, often sweet and mostly not cooked (except sometimes at the weekend). This is not unique to the UK, but more of a culinary feature of the ‘West’. Most of Western Europe and the US seems to start the day with a meal that roughly conforms to those criteria. Having been lucky enough to travel, live and eat in other parts of the world, thankfully this is not a global phenomenon. Elsewhere, sanity prevails and the restrictions on what you are supposed to eat before 12pm are less austere. Sure, other countries have ‘breakfast foods’ but they are full of joy and excitement. Chilaquiles, fried tortillas slathered in salsa and eaten with refried beans. Maneesh, little pizza like flatbread topped with za’atar, cheese or spicy minced lamb and onions. Tamago kake gohan, eggs beaten and poured over hot rice with soy sauce and nori.

Today we’re talking about eggs and tomatoes. Shakshuka, huevos rancheros, makhlama, ojja, menemen, uovo in purgatorio - many places make a dish of eggs cooked in, on, or around a tomato sauce with varying accompaniments, and I love all of them. The recipe below is simple (you don’t even need to use a knife) but hinges on one key ingredient, merguez, a spicy lamb sausage found across North Africa, which is going to do all of the hard work for you in giving this dish flavour. I bought these at a Moroccan shop on Golborne Road. Elsewhere in London, Blackstock Road in Finsbury Park is an excellent place to find merguez. They are also available online here and a more premium version here. You’ll find the long peppers and harissa (a spicy chilli paste) in any shop that sells merguez.

---

Merguez, Eggs and Tomato Sauce

Ingredients (serves 1, double and use a larger frying pan for 2)

1. 2 or 3 Long Peppers

2. 2 Merguez

3. 250g Tomato Passata

4. 1 Egg

5. A Teaspoon of Harissa

6. Parsley or Coriander (optional)

7. A Squeeze of Lemon Juice

8. Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

Method

If you have a gas hob, it’s quite fun to char the pepper over a high flame for a few minutes until they’re soft, but you don’t have to. Alternatively, place a small frying pan over a high heat, add the peppers and a drizzle of olive oil and cook for a few minutes until they have some colour and are softening. Set the peppers aside on a small plate.

Reduce the heat to medium and add your merguez. Cook for 6 or 7 minutes, turning, until the sausages have a nice colour and have released their fat into the pan. Then set aside with the peppers.

Keeping the heat at medium, pour in your tomato sauce. You want it to be bubbling pretty hard, we’re essentially frying it in the lamb fat, which will become most obvious at the edges of the pan where the sauce will caramelise and go dark and jammy. Season the sauce with a good pinch of salt, then crack in your egg(s) and let it bubble. Season the egg with salt and pepper and cook until set.

Return the sausages and peppers to the pan and turn off the heat. Spoon on the harissa, sprinkle over your herbs (if using) and finish with a nice squeeze of lemon juice over the whole lot. Eat with hot bread, oily chin and big smile.