Recipe #11: Poached Egg Tomato Soup

Ms. Boyardee has already informed our readers of this post even before I wrote it so there's some pressure from the chef to keep this blog going more consistently and I love her and her food so I'll do that and you can expect some more recipes over the holiday season.

This recipe is the EASIEST recipe that we have had on the blog thus far...at least the soup portion. The soup has less ingredient than a PB & J sandwich and for all you culinary experts out there....that's three. Number One: Large can of crushed tomatoes (I skillfully completed the opening of this can without cutting myself-- hint: use can opener ), Number two: Garlic ( we added 300% more than recommended garlic intake as per usual), Number 3: Water (abundantly available via your tap). Bring all those ingredients to a boil and voila, tomato soup.

Ms. Boyardee and I added some spices like black pepper, salt, crushed red chilies because with thought it would be a little bland. The recipe then calls for toasted baguette bread with raw garlic rubbed onto it which surprisingly adds a lot of flavour.  Then the hard part comes along... the poached egg.

Now I knew we had to tread lightly with these poached eggs. Ms. Boyardee and eggs don't get along too well sometimes. She refers to over-easy eggs as "dippy toast eggs" as do all the Boyardees and I have become accustomed to this lingo. If the eggs she's preparing become over-hard or "un-dippyable", it is then un-edible in her mind. Most times she gets it on her first try, if not, the second try, and if not, I PRAY the third try before the eggs start hitting walls. 

All this to be said, I started cracking the eggs to be poached and I cracked three of them in a row, all "un-dippyable"  as I broke the yolk so I dismissed myself from this job (I'll stick to opening tomato cans). I then sat back and watched the master at work, four perfect eggs in row. The key is to bring the soup down from boiling to a medium heat and carefully insert the eggs (ideally all at almost the same time) beneath the liquid. The eggs cook in a couple minutes to a perfect "dippable" consistency and then when you eat the soup, the yolk adds a ton of flavour. The garlic covered bread is also put into the soup and both the yolk and the bread add  a lot to the flavour so even the bland tomato soup would have tasted amazing. 

We topped the plate with some fresh basil and of course washed it down with some vino. All in all the recipe was over(ly) easy (Ha...egg jokes) and will meet your egg-spectations ( Ok...I'll stop). You can tell which picture is ours below by the insertion of wine for water (always a good trade). 

J: 7/10 "eggs-eptional"

A: 6/10 "Could have been dippy-er"