When you say tea, I say sweet. Mmmm, I’m especially fond of sipping it with pineapple mint while I’m working in my garden. Here in the south it’s an icon, and country music lyrics like I’ll be your sweet iced tea, and kisses sweeter than iced tea are a testament to the fact that Southerners like it really, really sweet! But have you ever considered tea a cooking ingredient? Well today, that’s just what the Recipe Redux is challenging:
Tea cups around the world are bubbling up with bold new flavors: From cardamom chai and sencha green to bubble teas and veggie teas. We wish we could attend the World Tea Expo the end of this month – but in lieu of a plane ticket, we’ll be cooking and baking and stirring up tea-inspired healthy dishes.
I first read about this trend in Janet Helm’s (Nutrition Unplugged) blog post back in November. And sure enough, I am seeing all sorts of culinary creations using tea from entrees like Tea-Smoked Chicken to desserts like Green Tea Cheesecake. In Janet’s post she also noted that Matcha, green tea extract from Japan, was “hot, hot, hot”.
So out of sheer curiousity, I purchased Matcha and went back to my kitchen to experiment. But before I started, I surfed the web to see what other food bloggers had done with it. Whoa, the list was long including adding it to: muffin batters, cookie doughs, smoothies, salad dressings! Not sure where to start I decided to pick something on my recipes I want to try list. And there is was, baked eggs in tomato-paprika sauce, a recipe from Williams-Sonoma. Now, I had to consider whether I thought green tea would taste good with eggs? Yes, I think so. So I went about making my version. The result is a delicious, healthy brunch for two or a simple weeknight meal. It’s a good high quality protein source, full of lycopene (from the canned tomatoes) and of course gets a BIG boost of antioxiants from the Matcha used to season the tops of the eggs. (One glass of Matcha is said to be the equivalent of 10 glasses of green tea).
Be sure to check out the links at the bottom of this post for more creative ways to get culinary with tea.
Baked eggs in Tomato Sauce with Matcha
- Yield: 2 servings 1x
Ingredients
- 1–2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 small sweet onion, diced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- juice of a lime
- 2 tablespoons white wine
- 1 28 oz can whole peeled tomatoe with juices, tomatoes lightly crushed by hand
- 4 eggs
- Fresh flat-leaf parsely leaves for garnish
- Matcha green tea and salt blend to taste
-
for Matcha green tea and sea salt blend
- 1 Tablespoon coarse sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Matcha green tea powder
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. In a 12 inch cast iron skillet over medium heat, warm olive oil.
3 . Add onion and cook stirring occasssionally until softened.
4. Add garlic and cook stirring constantly, about 1 minute.
5. Add tomatoes, lime juice, white wine and simmer until slightly thickened, about 5 to 7 minutes.
6. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat.
7.Using the back of a spoon, create a pocket for each egg in the tomato sauce. Crack one egg into each pocket.
8.Transfer skillet to oven and bake until egg whites are just set and the yolks are still runny, about 8 minutes.
9. Season eggs with Matcha green tea and sea salt blend, to taste. Garnish with fresh parsely leaves. Serve immediately. Serves 2.
Recent Comments