Uova in Purgatorio

One of the things I find interesting about Italian cooking is how often I approach it through the lens of an American, or maybe more specifically, through the lens of someone who grew up in Gilroy. When an Italian recipe tells me to gently infuse a little olive oil with two cloves of garlic and then remove them, my instinct is usually to call the authorities. Around here, garlic isn't an accent, it's a lifestyle. More than once I've looked at a recipe calling for two cloves and responded by throwing in an entire head. Sometimes two.

In this case, though, I tend to side with the Italians. Sometimes, when ingredients are exceptional, subtraction becomes more powerful than addition.

Breakfast is one of those meals where I don't want to drop the hammer on ingredients on the road to Flavortown. I don't want onions, AND roasted sweet peppers, AND hot peppers, AND enough garlic to ward off vampires for a three county radius. I want good tomatoes and good eggs to do most of the talking.

Which brings me to what is probably the most important ingredient in this dish: the tomatoes.

In the years leading up to opening my pizza restaurant, I conducted more blind tomato tastings than any reasonable person should admit to. We tasted imported tomatoes, domestic tomatoes, expensive tomatoes, cheap tomatoes, tomatoes available from small grocers and those only available to buyers with a wholesale license. The results were often surprising.

For most of my cooking, I love the San Merican tomatoes. They're grown domestically and, to my palate, consistently outperform imported tomatoes when it comes to sweetness, freshness, and aroma. To the San Marzano DOP purists, let me say this: there is absolutely a place for those tomatoes. In fact, I think they're often the best choice for Neapolitan pizza. They're processed to reduce moisture, which allows them to go straight onto a pizza without making a mess of the crust.

But when you're cooking the tomatoes, I tend to prefer the domestic products. They retain more moisture, which means they retain more of those fresh, juicy, aromatic qualities that make tomatoes taste alive and give you more to work with when you are cooking them down in a pan. Across our tastings, the more heavily processed imported tomatoes often developed what I can only describe as a heavy, blah, "canned" flavor. Not because they're bad, but because reducing moisture at an industrial scale isn't the same thing as slowly concentrating flavor in a pan.

You like what you like, of course. But if you've never done a blind tasting with the labels removed, I encourage it. You may surprise yourself.

The eggs matter just as much. Healthy hens eating a varied diet produce rich golden yolks that bring a depth and richness no recipe can manufacture later. We use eggs from the chickens that live here on the farm, and that connection to the ingredients is part of what makes a simple dish like this special.

Beyond that, there isn't much left to hide behind. Use good olive oil. Use fresh basil. Find a loaf of crusty local sourdough. Bonus points if you know the name of the person who baked it (A little love goes a long way).

I like to stir a chiffonade of basil into the tomatoes right before the eggs go in. Just enough time for the basil to perfume the sauce without losing its freshness. Once the eggs are cooked, I'll tear a few more leaves into little fingernail-sized pieces and scatter them over the top. Then comes a healthy glug of bright, grassy olive oil.

At that point, all that's left is a spoon, a piece of bread, and the good sense not to overcomplicate things.