Herby tomato and anchovy omelette

I’m a big omelette fan. It’s my weapon of choice for a quick and tasty solitary supper. I’ve recently stumbled across a very tasty filling that has me licking my lips every time I make it. I won’t talk about how to make an omelette since everyone seems to have their own idea. Instead I’ll just discuss the sauce. I actually think that it may make a pretty good pasta sauce too if you make more of it.

Ingredients

  • 8-12 cherry tomatoes
  • a handful of fresh origanum
  • a tablespoon or two of fresh parsley
  • 2-4 anchovy fillets
  • a little oil for frying
  • black pepper to taste

Preparation

  • Heat oil in a small pot at moderate heat
  • Add cherry tomatoes and stir occasionally
  • Wash and chop the origanum and parsley
  • Chop and mix the anchovy fillets with the herbs
  • When the tomatoes skins start cracking add the herbs and anchovies
  • Fry a short while and then squash the tomatoes to make a sauce
  • Simmer for a minute or 3
  • Season with black pepper to taste

Notes

This ratio of ingredients recipe can be varied quite a lot depending on your preference. I tend to use more anchovies rather than less. Also goes well with a bit of grated cheddar cheese in an omelette.

Neilen Marais / eggs, food, origanum, parsely & recipe

15 October 2010 | 1 comment

An interesting note about eggshells

Eggshells are a good source of calcium for plants. Commonly people recommend things like “12 crushed eggshells for a tomato plant”. Problem is, storing eggshells in their original shape takes quite a bit of space. On the other hand, they are kinda hard to count once they have been crushed… Enter the realisation of a long held dream:

My shiny new kitchen scale

Yes, that is a kitchen scale. Not the pretiest, but by a long shot not the ugliest scale I saw on the day, it weighed in at a fairly affordable R 130 from Game. The only question is why it took me so long to buy one. I guess after hinting that I want a kitchen scale before several successive birthdays and christmasses I should have gotten the message.

But more importantly, said scale loaded with 4 large eggshells (yes I did remember to zero with the bowl on) indicates that each shell weighs about 5.5g. So there you have it, if ever you need to add 12 eggshells to your tomato plant, you can just weigh out 66g of crushed eggshell.

The weight of eggshells

Neilen Marais / eggs & gardening

1 August 2010 | 4 comments