Eggs in puttanesca sauce: Eggs in Purgatory
After seeing this recipe for eggs in puttanesca sauce on Smitten Kitchen one evening, I literally dived into my kitchen to make it for supper. I frequently forget about planning my meals and find myself frantically trying to cobble them together at 7 p.m. Her recipe is an adaptation of Nigella Lawson’s Eggs in Purgatory and is so delicious.
Apart from the toast, which I think should be made from good bread, all the other ingredients are pantry staples.
The combination of tomatoes, capers, olives, garlic, anchovies, and parsley is one of my favourite Italian flavours. I often crave it with a longing that feels like it’s in my bones.
My summer pasta recipe has most of these ingredients but is made with fresh tomatoes, basil and lemon. Puttanesca is a favourite pasta sauce. It’s a little richer but packed with deliciousness.
Shakshuka is a robust breakfast dish that could easily be served for lunch or supper. This dish of eggs in puttanesca sauce is an Italian version of that. I love to add a handful of baby spinach leaves to the sauce too. I’m rather partial to squishing spinach into many of my pasta dishes like:
Easy tomato & spinach baked ravioli
Creamy pasta with artichokes, spinach & capers
Baked gnocchi with creamy tomato & spinach
Creamy salmon pasta with spinach & capers
I failed to read the small print on the can of tomatoes I used and just grabbed the prettiest one in my pantry for the video. I prefer to use a chunkier chopped tomato here. This one was on the edge of being passata.
I have added a smidge more of the flavour bits to the recipe than Smitten Kitchen. Being a chilli wimp I kept the chilli at 1/8th of a teaspoon so these eggs are mildly in purgatory. Although Nigella only used 1/4 of a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes, so feel free to ramp yours up if you like heat.
Eggs for supper are often what I turn to but they can feel a little shy in substance to constitute a meal. This recipe is my new favourite quick-fix, last-minute, I forgot-to-plan-for-supper supper.
On the bread front, I cleverly always stash a few slices of ciabatta or sourdough in my freezer for just these occasions. Brushing the slices with butter or olive oil and frying them vs. toasting them dry makes them more decadent.
This dish comes together in 20 minutes from start to finish and I’m obsessed.
A few tips on how to make this recipe:
Gently squash the olives to remove the pips. They are much more delicious than already pipped olives which I would never buy.
You can use fresh oregano or dried here. Both are equally as nice.
Cooking eggs in sauce on the stovetop can be tricky. You want runny yolks, but you want the whites to set. The time will vary depending on how deep and wide the holes you made in the sauce are. If you are worried, a little hack is to separate the eggs and add the whites first to cook longer and then add the yolks halfway through.
Alternatively, drag some of the egg white through the sauce with a chopstick to spread it out for quicker cooking. The wider the area the whites spread into within the sauce the easier they will cook through
I like to cook the sauce a little longer than 5 minutes as stated in the original recipe. I prefer tomatoes to lose that raw flavour they have from a tin.
Cover the pan while the eggs are cooking to create some steam and start checking them from about 4-5 minutes for doneness. Sprinkle the grated Parmesan halfway through and again at the end. You can’t really have enough.
If you want to make pasta with the sauce, double the flavour bits or check out my recipe for spaghetti puttanesca.
A few other egg recipes you might like:
Eggs fried in feta a chilli crisp oil
This quantity of sauce will be enough for 2 – 4 eggs. Cook a little longer if you add more than 2 eggs.
Recipe serves 2
Eggs in puttanesca sauce
Ingredients
- A few fresh oregano leaves from a 7cm sprig about 8 leaves or 1 tsp dried
- ¼ cup of fresh Italian parsley leaves
- 2 garlic cloves thinly sliced
- 8 black olives such as calamata and pips removed
- 1 ½ Tbsp capers drained
- 3 – 4 anchovies
- A splash of olive oil + extra to drizzle at the end
- Pinch or more dried chilli flakes or up to 1/8th of a teaspoon
- 1 x 410gms 14-ounce tin of good quality chopped peeled tomatoes
- 2 – 4 Free range eggs
- Freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino
Instructions
- First roughly chop the herbs on a cutting board then add the garlic, olives, capers, and anchovies to the pile. Run a knife through everything until it’s evenly chopped. It should still be a little chunky.
- Heat the olive oil in a small skillet and fry the herb mixture for a minute or two until fragrant.
- Add the tin of tomatoes and stir well. It will splatter a bit at this stage. Add the chilli.
- Cook this for about 10 minutes and until the rawness of the tomatoes has cooked off.
- Break your egg in a small ramekin and make wideish holes in the sauce. Add each egg gently to the holes. Cover the pan and cook until the whites are firm and the egg yolks are cooked to your desired consistency (see the note above regarding separating the eggs).
- Halfway through the cooking time, add the chopped Parmesan or Pecorino Add some more at the end along with a little more chopped parsley (optional), and a drizzle of extra olive oil.
- Dig into those runny yolks with your crunchy buttered toast.
Notes
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