As much as I enjoy pushing bounds in the kitchen, I love the foundational elements, working with the basics. Neven’s post about tomato sauce — something so simple, something we usually plop out of a jar — is such a perfect example of a wonderful, basic but versatile component of cooking.

Tonight, I had a double batch sitting in the fridge that either needed to get used or get frozen. A few eggs have been eying me suspiciously for a while as well. Seemed like a perfect match.

Poaching sounds like one of those difficult undertakings not suited for mere mortals. I’ll be honest with you, poaching an egg fit for an eggs benedict, in water, does require some finesse (or a pod!). An egg in tomato sauce though? Couldn’t be simpler. Your liquid is thicker, more forgiving and if the whole thing falls apart, well, stir it up, add some black pepper and call it a carbonara.

For two eggs, I used about a cup and a half of sauce in a pretty small (1.5 quart) pot — you want to allow the liquid to fill enough of the pot to poach the eggs without using so much sauce as to be wasteful. Bring the sauce to a slow simmer on medium-low heat. I cracked each egg into a bowl before carefully sliding the egg into the sauce, let it cook covered for right about 4-5 minutes, until the whites set, then off the heat, uncovered, for another 2-3 minutes. While it was resting, I toasted a couple of slices of fresh multigrain bread (I have the great fortune of living blocks away from a fantastic bakery) and roasted half a dozen or so spears of asparagus (coated in a little canola oil, kosher salt and black pepper, in a 400 degree oven for maybe 10 minutes). Fished the eggs out, on top of the toast they went, poured on the rest of the sauce, plated the asparagus spears, seasoned everything with a little kosher salt and a few grinds of black pepper. A glass from a cheapo screw top shiraz went along nicely.