Eggs à la Portugaise

Œufs à la portugaise (eggs baked over tomato fondue) teaches one true thing: the tomato must be thick enough to stand in a little heap before an egg goes anywhere near it. Fondue here means tomatoes reduced to a concentrated pulp, not cheese. Leave it watery and the whites swim; reduce it properly and the eggs settle over a deep-red foundation that tastes far larger than its short ingredient list.

The service kitchen behind this entry assumed a saucier with tomato fondue held ready, individual egg dishes, and a salamander, a fierce overhead broiler, that set the whites in minutes. At home, one small saucepan, four shallow dishes, and a hot conventional oven do the work. Preparing the fondue ahead was brigade scaffolding, but its concentration and the three final heaps are the dish, so those stay exactly where the source puts them. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The finished eggs should have tender white, loose golden yolks, and three bright spoonfuls of tomato, one between the eggs and one at each end, each marked with parsley. Reduce the fondue until a spoon leaves a clean path across the saucepan and a teaspoonful holds its shape. That is the step that decides everything.