Tomato & Egg Stir-fry

Variations

• Saucier: Add more water/stock to make it great for mixing into rice.
• Tomato-egg noodles: Spoon the same sauce over noodles (xihongshi jidan mian).
• With tofu: Add soft tofu to bulk it up.
• With veg: Toss in onion or pepper, or use it as a stir-fried-rice topping.

Tips

• There are three ways to put an egg in a sauce, and this is the one that takes it out and brings it back. Menemen lays the family out: shakshuka cracks the eggs in whole and poaches them in the sauce, keeping them separate; menemen stirs them through, so egg and tomato become one thing; and this dish cooks the egg by itself and folds it back in, keeping the two visibly separate. Eggs benedict sorts the site's egg dishes on the same axis.
• What the detour is avoiding is water. Menemen states the mechanism: heat makes egg proteins bond and contract, and as they do they squeeze water out — so eggs stirred into a wet tomato base end up sitting in a puddle of tomato water that will not go back in. Cooking eggs puts a number on the line: above 80°C the proteins contract hard and squeeze water out, leaving dry curds in liquid. A simmering tomato sauce is at 100°C, so an egg left in it is past that line from the first second.
• Why plenty of oil and high heat. Water in the beaten egg flashes to steam against a hot enough surface and inflates the curd. Oil is what moves the pan's heat into the egg fast enough for that to happen before the protein toughens. The cost is that it is done in seconds, so it has to come out half set — poo pad pong curry uses the same trick and names this dish while doing it. In that page's words, cooked through, it is scrambled egg.
• The sugar is not there to sweeten it. It is the adjustment balancing flavour describes: acidity is answered with sweetness. Here the sauce is the liquid the tomatoes gave up, so how much sugar it needs is decided by the tomatoes — which is what the line below means by adjusting to yours.
• Ketchup does more than colour. It is tomato already reduced and already sweetened and acidified, so it brings sugar and acid in with the colour. Use it and cut the sugar back by about as much, or the balance moves twice in the same direction.
• Cook the eggs first and set them aside so they stay soft and don't overcook.
• Use plenty of oil on high heat for big, fluffy egg curds.
• A little sugar balances the tomato's acidity — adjust to your tomatoes.
• Ripe, juicy tomatoes make their own sauce; ketchup boosts color if they're pale.
• Add the egg back at the very end and fold gently.