Sopa de tomate

Portuguese tomato soup with poached egg

Today, I wanted to cook something new yet simple as it was already 4 pm and we were getting hangry. Three reasons for this choice: we had almost all needed ingredients, I’ve never had a soup with poached egg before, and I want to try all the recipes from the book “Eat Portugal”.

Here’s what you need:

• 5 large tomatoes or one pack of Italian strained tomatoes (serves 4)
• olive oil
• 2 onions
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 toasted piece of bread for each serving (I recommend Pumpernickel)
• 1 egg for each serving
• salt
• spices of your choice

Chopped parsley is always good

1. First, peel and chop the tomatoes, and finely slice the onions and garlic. Fry them all in the bottom of the saucepan for a couple of minutes, then turn down the hit and allow the tomatoes to cook down.
2. Once you have a nice thick pulp, add the salt to taste and some cold water to make the soup watery. I can’t resist and put also some Italian herbs, sweet paprika, crushed red pepper, black pepper and cayenne pepper.
3. Bring back to the boil and when you’re ready to serve, poach the eggs in the top of the soup (you can also poach them separately and add them afterwards to the bowls).
4. Toast the bread and place it in the bottoms of soup bowls. Ladle the soup over the bread, making sure an egg gets into each bowl.

Note: another version includes sliced potatoes that are boiled in the soup.

I served it with some bread and spicy oil. I chose hazelnut oil and Sicilian blend bread dipping seasoning and it was fa-antastic!

You may be interested in Portuguese orange cake recipe as well, which you can find here.