I don’t know about you, but one of the things I miss the most in my low-chemical diet is tomatoes. Not eating them removes a whole lot of fun things, including one of my favourite breakfasts (brunches?), which is spiced baked eggs in tomato sauce.
Never fear, this is a fantastic replacement.
Recipe items you might choose to make ahead:
Chicken stock (or, as the fancy-pants hipsters call it, bone broth). I always make my own, because then I know what goes into it. Make sure it’s concentrated, and that you’ve skimmed the fat off it.
The sauce. I use it for spaghetti bolognese the night before, and use the leftovers for breakfast. Winning.
This recipe is in two parts: Sauce, then eggs
You need the sauce to make the eggs. It’s suitable for you if you are low-amine, low-salicylate, and ok with eggs. Obviously.
No-Tomato Sauce (pasta sauce/condiment) recipe
Mine is adapted from this equally awesome version at Cooking for Oscar.
- 1/3 of a sweet potato, peeled
- 2 large tinned pears (4 halves). Make sure they were canned in syrup, not juice!
- 2 stalks of celery
- 3 or 4 ladle-fulls of your chicken stock
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, smashed and finely chopped
- 1 standard tin of red kidney beans
- water
- a shake of salt
- 1/2 a dessertspoon of brown sugar
- 1 tsp citric acid
Get out your food processor and a shredding attachment. If you don’t have one, use your grater and a mouli and you’ll get the same result overall.
Grate or shred the sweet potato, the pears, and the celery.
Put them in a saucepan with a few ladles of your stock. I work on approximations, so make it kind of soupy. Add the spring onions and garlic, then put it all on a high to medium heat and simmer these goodies. They’ll smell like lovely soup, but resist the urge to drink it.
Change your food processor attachment and whiz up the kidney beans. They’re thick as fuck, so add some water to keep ’em moving.
Once you think the vegies in the stock are cooked and mushy, throw them back into the food processor with your kidney beans. Cover it and whiz them for about 5 minutes until it’s all combined.
Then add them back onto the stove and set to simmer. Add your citric acid and brown sugar, and stir well. Let it simmer for about 15 minutes but remember to stir it! The kidney beans might sink to the bottom if you don’t. You’re after a chutney kind of consistency. Taste it and add salt if you think it would be better for it.
When you’re done, you can use some of it for bolognese (I find about half the volume is suitable for a large spaghetti meal for two hungry adults). It’s also fantastic on steak, or snags, or used as a condiment…
Store the rest in a jar in your fridge. It’ll keep for about a week.
Baked eggs
- No-tomato sauce
- 1 egg
- Butter
Grab a small ceramic pannier and butter it.
Spoon in a whack of sauce.
Add your egg.
Add more sauce.
Cover with tinfoil and bake at 180-200 celsius for about half an hour.
Serve with cheesy flat-breads
- Gluten-free self-raising flour (find one that isn’t mostly corn unless you can tolerate corn/maize)
- salt
- 2 dessertspoons of sunflower oil
- warm water
In a small bowl, half fill it with flour, and add some salt.
Create a well in the flour and add your oil. Stir to combine, then start adding small amounts of water. Stir it in completely before you continue, so you don’t make it too wet. You want it just slightly too dry.
Turn it out onto a floured board and knead it gently until it forms a beautiful, small ball. Let it sit for about 15 minutes.
Divide the ball up in to three or four, and roll them out into circles.
Fry them dry in a non-stick pan, on a medium heat. They’ll rise a little imperfectly, and that’s the nature of the beast.
Once they’re all cooked, pile some cheese onto one, add another one as a lid, and it on a piece of tinfoil. Throw it in the oven alongside your baked eggs.
This way, you have your own breads with which to mop up your sauce and eggs.
I like to serve mine with some preservative-free sausages, fried and chopped up and added to the sauce.
It’s a freaking amazing breakfast. Enjoy!
