Raid the Fridge Fridays: Creamy tomato baked eggs

Let me introduce you to my kitchen. I won’t share many photos because not even the most flattering camera angle would deem it appealing. My words will have to do.

There are many food memoirs out there which have the word ‘kitchen’ in the title. ‘My Little Paris Kitchen’. ‘The Kitchen Diaries’. ‘Love in a Tuscan Kitchen’. You know the drill. When I look at my kitchen in this ground-floor apartment in a suburb of Toulouse, the nicest adjective which comes to mind is ‘retro’.

It appears that our landlady designed the kitchen with ‘retro’ in mind; the counter is black and, naturally, there’s not enough of it, the wallpaper is that textured kind that has swirls and grooves which are impossible to clean, and the burnt orange tiles give the whole room a ruddy glow. It is also eternally dark thanks to upstairs’ balcony hanging over the window to soak up all that warming sun I had hoped to see on my future food memoir book cover.

Not only that, but said-designer (I can’t keep blaming the landlady) clearly had never used a kitchen before. The one available plug socket is on the wall above the oven so should you need to use the toaster as you boil eggs, you have an electrical hazard on your hands. Cooking in this kitchen requires timing to be of the essence.

You may have gathered, the kitchen is not my favourite room in the flat. However, I spend an awful amount of time in there, as these newsletters can testify.

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That all said, it certainly isn’t the worst rented kitchen I’ve endured - they’ve all mostly been pokey and small, galleys with no surface space or simply extended livings rooms. One kitchen was its own room for once, airy, spacious and bright, but along with it, like a package deal of sorts, came a crazy flatmate who ran off with my £500 deposit.

Here, at least I can shut the door to my retro kitchen when the washing machine is rattling away or, when I blow the fuse thanks to a cheap juicer, it takes out just that one room rather than the entire flat. Plus, now, thankfully my housemate is pretty nice, although a bit weird as he seems to be performing in a one-man musical most of the time.

Eating is more often than not a social activity and, as a consequence, cooking is too. Throughout the long summer, the kitchen’s French windows were flung wide open, wistfully hoping to catch some breeze but instead mosquitoes and flies took the bait, no doubt living in our rainforest of a garden. To add to the kitchen’s glamour we strung up two tendrils of sticky-backed paper looking like spent snake skin, in the hopes of catching those nefarious critters. They are clearly more intelligent than us because these sticky snake skins were completely useless and we spent the summer chasing the insects with tea towels.

Friends would come over for apéro, drinks with charcuterie, or dinner, sometimes bringing a bottle or a chunk of Comte as an after-dinner snack, and we’d lay the table on the terrace. Gaylord owns a beautiful table topped with a slab of marble which used to belong to his grandmother. This now sits on our terrace, and is also my unofficial photography studio. Thank god ey, imagine taking photos in that humdinger of a kitchen? Summer lunches and dinners were eaten on the terrace, shaded from the sun, bowls of couscous salads, baguette, eggs, ham and cheese.

While the kitchen has room for improvement, it does churn out a lot of good food and one of those particularly rememberable lunches was one to share - creamy tomato baked eggs topped with crumbled cheese and pesto.

Cooking eggs in a thick sauce is such a neat trick as it is an efficient and easy one pot meal. Eggs often require a pan to themselves - honestly just the name Turkish eggs makes me think about washing up - but not here, no sir-ee, all the ingredients go into one pan which also doubles as the serving dish. Once the sauce is thick, you will be able to make hollows to cradle the eggs. Slowly those glassy eggy windows turn opaque like they’re dropping down the blinds.

Served from its pan it is a messy, crusty yet stunning centre-piece, especially as it’s so vivid and the little submerged eggs just wink up at you, those pert yolks ready to burst.

Creamy tomato baked eggs

Prep Time: 15 mins

Cook Time: 20 mins

Course: Lunch, Main Course, Dinner, Starter

Keyword: tomato, eggs, cream

Servings: 2

Ingredients

• ½ onion

• 1 clove of garlic

• ½ tsp dried herbs - I used herbes de Provence

• A pinch of cayenne

• Any vegetables you’d like to add - mushrooms, peppers, colourful cherry tomatoes, courgette, aubergine etc.

• ¾ 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

• 2 heaped tbsp crème fraiche or 3 tbsp double cream

• 4 eggs

• Salt and pepper

• Garnish options: goat’s cheese, feta, chopped fresh herbs, pesto

Instructions

• Dice the onion and heat some olive oil in a frying pan - ideally a frying pan that can go in the oven.

• Once hot, add the onion, lower the temperature and fry for about 5 minutes until softened.

• Crush the garlic and add to the onions, along with some salt, the herbs and cayenne. Cook for 30 seconds until fragrant.

• At this stage, add any sliced vegetables you would like and cook for 5 minutes to soften. I had mushrooms and tomatoes in the fridge, but add whatever you fancy.

• Pour in the chopped tomatoes - it doesn’t matter if it’s roughly ¾ of the can, assess it by eye.

• Bring to the boil and stir to combine with the onion and vegetables. Add the tablespoons of crème fraiche or cream, stir and leave to simmer. It should take around 5-10 minutes for the mixture to become thick enough for you to pull your wooden spoon through and the sauce won’t flow back. You want it thick enough to make hollows for your eggs.

• Remove the pan from the heat. Make a dent in the sauce - you want to see the pan beneath - then carefully crack in the egg. Repeat this four times, evenly spacing the eggs around the pan. Season each egg with some salt and pepper.

• Put the pan back on the heat (reduce it to low) and preheat the grill to medium.

• Gently cook the eggs - they are useful windows so you will see they start cooking at the base immediately and will gradually turn opaque. Cover with a lid to allow the steam to help. Once the eggs are opaque but they’re still a bit loose and jiggly, put the pan under the grill for a minute to cook the white. Keep your eye on them as you don’t want to overcook the yolks! Each egg should have a bit of softness and movement when you wiggle the pan.

• Remove the pan from the oven then cover in goat’s cheese or feta, chopped herbs or drizzled pesto. Serve with bread and maybe some sliced avocado.