The Family Table: Sunday-Funday spent in the kitchen
Sundays are my cooking days.
By the time the work week winds down, my brain is focused on unwinding. For some people that’s Netflix marathon time, but for me, it’s time to decompress in my favorite place: the kitchen.
As the weather gets colder and hearty soups and stews are welcoming, I get the opportunity to put all of my slow cookers to work (we have three) so that dinners for the week are ready and waiting. While some of my friends chuckle at the amount of cooking I do on a Sunday, I assure you that when you feed five, it goes quickly.
Over the past weekend, I made a 4-pound lamb shoulder, 4 pounds of meatballs in homemade sauce and roasted potatoes and carrots. As I type this on Tuesday, I’m crossing my fingers that the leftovers of those meals takes us through Wednesday’s dinner. While the foods I make are simple — putting them together is almost always adding ingredients to the slow cooker, setting it and walking away — I try to make sure that the weekly batch of meatballs and sauce aren’t always sitting on top of pasta.
While all three kiddos in the household can eat the heck out of pasta, it gets boring. The meatballs end up as sandwiches, cut up as the croutons on a salad (don’t scrunch your nose till you’ve tried it), eaten just as they are in a bowl with some cheese or as an extra bump of protein in a dish of Eggs in Purgatory.
The dish is one that I learned about several years ago at a cooking demonstration. The chef offered up some brunch ideas that were simple to prepare for a crowd. Among them, was the eggs poached in spaghetti sauce. It was definitely one that I was unsure about, but I was completely wrong to doubt. There’s something comforting about the combination of sauce, red pepper flakes, cheese and eggs married together and simmered on the stove.
The bonus is that it takes no time at all — and no special equipment beyond a non-stick skillet and a lid.
The result is hearty and the ways to simplify it even further are endless. While I used my fresh homemade sauce, a store bought bottle works just as well. The meatballs are my add in, so without them, it’s a five-ingredient recipe with things you probably have on hand at home. To me, it’s one of those breakfast, lunch or dinner meals that you just as easily make for one as you can for a dozen.
Eggs in Purgatory
1 to 2 cups red sauce
Red pepper flakes to taste
4 eggs
8 meatballs, heated and sliced
Toast
Parmesan cheese
Olive oil
Heat a teaspoon of olive oil over medium heat in a non-stick pan. Add in the pepper flakes to taste, and saut茅 them for a minute or two. Pour in the red sauce, and cover to heat the sauce to a bubble. Crack four eggs into the pan, and cover. Check on them after about 3 minutes.
I like the eggs just set, so that the yolks are runny.
If you want them to go a bit longer, go right ahead.
Put a piece of toast into a bowl, and ladle the set egg and some sauce over the toast. Top it with parmesan cheese and some meatball slices.